








^^0^ 



^oV* 











THE CITIZEN'S LIBRARY 

Education and 
Industrial Evolution 



BY 
FRANK TRACY CARLTON, Ph.D. 



Professor of Economics and History 
IN Albion College 



I13eto gorft 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1908 



All rights reserved 






UBHARY of O0N»SHE«S 
'.wo UODies Hecoiv<M 

SEP la, m^ 

OUHSS OL AAc (tu. 

boPY o.» 



Copyright, 1908 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Set up and electrotyped. Printed September. 1908 



The MASON-HENRY Press 

Syracuse, New York 



Co tfte Q^emotg 

OF MY MOTHER 
AND TO MY WIFE 



PREFACE 

The labor problem has always been one of the 
chief causes of economic thought and research. In 
recent decades this problem has held a predominant 
place in the minds of students of economic ques- 
tions. Economists, when considering this complex 
problem, have often overlooked one very important 
factor, — education. John Stuart Mill stands pre- 
eminent among economists in recognizing the true 
value of education in the betterment of the masses 
and in the solution of the labor problem. The 
pages of this volume are devoted to a consideration 
of the educational problems which are vitally and 
indivisibly connected with the social and industrial 
betterment of the people of the United States. The 
author hopes that it may lead to a more general' 
recognition of the truth that modifications in edu- 
cation are demanded on account of industrial and 
social evolution, and with this they should keep 
pace. 

Portions of several chapters have already ap- 
peared as articles contributed to The Engineering 
Magazine, The Popular Science Monthly, The Jour- 
nal of Pedagogy, and Education. For many facts 
and statistics the author is indebted to official pub- 
lications of the United States government. 

FTC 
Albion, Michigan. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 

Introduction . . 3 

Increased pioduction during the nineteenth 
century made possible modern democracy and uni- 
versal education. — Modern economic and educa- 
tional thought have developed along parallel lines. 
— Early education laid stress upon those elements 
which were not important to the masses. — Mod- 
ern education should benefit all classes, — should 
be democratic. — The relation between education 
and industry. — The significance of educational 
"fads." — The true value of classical and purely 
cultural studies. — The problem of the twentieth 
century is to make education an engine for social 
betterment, 

PART I 

The Modern Educational Problem 

CHAPTER H 

Educational Epochs in the United States . 21 

Educational progress is secondary to industrial 
and social advance, and lags somewhat behind the 
latter. — First period in the educational history of 
America. — Second period. — Third period. — Fourth 
period. — How the new science of education may 
become truly scientific. 

ix 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER III 



The Relation between Educational Advance and 
Industrial Progress 45 

Criticism of the "great man" theory of edu- 
cation. — Education is the combined work of many 
different institutions. — The paradox of modern 
industrial Hfe. — The school must furnish a clew td- 
the intricate industrial labyrinth. — The order fol^ 
lowed in the enrichment of the curriculum. — 
The influence of the frontier, — The effect of its 
disappearance. — The importance of characteristic 
traits of immigrants. — The modern city is a mere- 
industrial establishment. — The city and educational 
programs. — Division of workers into distinct 
classes. — The growing rigidity of class demarka- 
tion. — The effect of consolidation of industry and ^ 
the "machine process." — The problem of leisure. — 
The economic limit of subdivision of labor. — 
The persistence of inherited traits. — Imperialism 
and education. 

CHAPTER IV 

New Aims^ Ideals and Methods in Education . 73 

The conflict between old and new educational 
ideals. — The demand for uniformity in spite of 
individual variations. — The coexistence of many 
types in the moral, physical and intellectual 
world. — The directive function of the ^|k)ol. — 
Value of personal experience in the ecracative 
process. — The lesson tafight by sociology. — The 
proper sphere of the text-book. — The prejudice 
against manual labor. — Educational ideals of to-day 
do not tend to soften this prejudice. — Undue 
emphasis is laid upon personal success. — Useful 
work is the true aim of human activities. 

X 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER V 

Woman and Industry 96 

The problem is complicated by deep-seated 
prejudices. — Modifications in the industrial func- 
tions of the home. — The old ideal of home life is 
not adapted to the present. — The multiplication of 
women wage-earners. — Woman is at the parting 
of the ways. — The economic effect of the entrance 
of women into industry. — Its effect upon the race. 

CHAPTER VI 

Education of Women 109 

Division of educational functions between the 
home and the school. — The increasing importance 
of the school. — The home is not always the best 
place for children. — The parental school teaches 
certain valuable lessons to educators. — The home 
will continue to be the most fundamental of 
American institutions. — The education of women 
presents a double task. — The importance of wo- 
man's position in charge of the home. — The con- 
ception of wide differences in the abilities of the 
two sexes is being removed. — Conclusion. 

CHAPTER VII 

The Industrial and Educational Value of Manual 
Training and Laboratory Work . . .127 

The significance of the introduction of manual 
training and laboratory work into the curriculum. 
— The distinction between trade, manual-training 
and technical schools. — Functions of each. — The 
training of the technical and the shop man. — The 
manual-training school should relieve the technical 
school of preparatory work. — The necessity of 
training for American workmen.— Manual training 
and labor unions. 

xi 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER VIII 



The Educational and Industrial Significance of 
THE Arts and Crafts Movement . . . 140 

The arts and crafts movement is a part of the 
democratic movement in education. — The relation 
between art and industry. — Art in the crafts 
emphasizes services. — Indications of a revival of 
skilled hand w^ork. — Arts and crafts societies. — 
Civic improvement. 

CHAPTER IX 

Organized Labor and Educational Progress . . 150 
Industrial freedom and equality is a dominant 
issue of to-day. — The ethics of organized labor. — 
The significance of the labor movement. — The 
ideals of organized labor. — Labor unions and child 
labor. — The significance of the opposition to child- 
labor legislation. — Progress^ toward race soli- 
darity. — Unions are entering upon a period of 
constructive work. — Past services of organized 
labor to the cause of education. — Educational 
demands of organized labor. 

PART II 

Actual or Proposed Additions to the Educa- 
tional System 

CHAPTER X 

Industrial and Trade Education .... 169 
The kindergarten movement. — Manual train- 
ing. — Domestic science or household economics. — j 
The trade school. — Self-supporting or half-time 
schools. — Correspondence instruction. — The negro 
industrial school.— Apprenticeship in the United 
States. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER XI 

Technical, Agricultural and Commercial Edu- 
cation 204 

Technical education. — Agricultural education. — 
(a) The agricultural college. — (b) Agriculture in 
the public schools. — (c) The farmers' institute. — 
(d) The United States Department of Agricul- 
ture. — Schools of forestry. — Commercial education. 

CHAPTER Xn 

The Continuation School 226 

Needed to provide educational opportunities for y 

young workers. — Objections to the establishment 
of continuation schools. — Curriculum. — Need of an 
object lesson. 

CHAPTER XHI 

The Treatment of the Truant and the Juvenile 

Delinquent 239 

A city problem. — A pen picture of the juvenile 
delinquent. — Conditions which produce the juvenile 
delinquent.— Children are never wholly bad. — The 
school should be directive. — Classes of schools for 
truants and juvenile delinquents. — The Chicago 
Parental School. — Treatment of juvenile crimi- 
nals. — The cumulative evils of poverty. 

CHAPTER XIV 

New Educational Projects 254 

The school as a social center and a playground. — 

The utilization of the summer vacation. — The 

school city. — School savings banks. — University 

extension and traveling libraries. — Transportation 

xiii 



CONTENTS 

of children to and from school. — Medical Inspection 
in the schools. — The school nursery. — Feeding 
school children. — The school as an employment'*^ 
agency. — Paying children to go to school. — What 
is the meaning of these innovations? — Industrial 
evolution is the only solid basis for educationari 
radicalism. 

CHAPTER XV 

The School of the Future 302 

Only the broad outlines of the educational pro- 
gram of the future can be discerned. — The fluidity " 
of future educational requirements. — In the future, 
students will be freed from rigid routine, — Example 
and environment, rather than precepts, will be 
emphasized. — The work of the school of the future 
will not be repulsive to the child. — The menace of 
"commercialization." — Organization of the teach- 
ers. — The need of well trained teachers. — The 
financial problem. — "Race suicide" and educational 
problems. 



EDUCATION AND 
INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 



CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTION 

During the last century the productive powers of 
man were repeatedly multiplied by means of the 
utilization of the energy of coal and water through 
the agency of steam and electricity. President 
James has illustrated this fact very vividly. "It is 
not too much to say that the population of the single 
State of Germany, with an area not exceeding that 
of Texas, is equal to-day in working force to the 
combined efforts of the population of the whole 
world at the beginning of the nineteenth century. 
The United States has to-day within its borders an 
effective power in the engines at work, far surpass- 
ing the total possible power of the entire population 
of the world a century ago. In many lines of work 
one man, with the aid of a small machine, may do 
as much work as fifty or a hundred men could have 
done at the beginning of the century ; while in other 
departments, owing to the development of the ap- 
plication of steam and electricity, one man may do 
what all the population of the world combined could 
not have accomplished a hundred years ago." As the 
direct result of this marvelous and unprecedented 
increase in the world's productive capabilities, the 
human race as a whole has been lifted from a 

3 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

condition of constant and strenuous struggle for the 
bare necessities of life to a higher plane of material 
comfort. With the increase of material wealth has 
been ushered in the new spirit of democracy, a spirit 
which could not come into being until science and 
invention had cleared the way. The worker is now 
considered, theoretically at least, to be an end in 
himself. He is no longer conceived to exist merely 
for the benefit and profit of others. In an age of 
machinery and utilized natural power, at the end of 
a period of extraordinary advancement in material 
wealth and during an era of peace ; leisure, culture, 
education, art and work are at last conceived to be 
the birthright of all, not merely of a favored few. 
Universal culture and education have heretofore 
been impossible because of the meager productivity 
of unaided man. 

During the nineteenth century, greater changes 
in manufacture, commerce and agriculture took 
place than during the preceding ten centuries. The 
military basis of civilization was hastily swept away, 
and replaced by industrial foundations. New classes 
of people and new economic interests arose, and 
old ones disappeared or sank in relative importance. 
Manners, customs and ways of living were trans- 
formed. The ends of the earth were drawn into 
vital contact; the continents were moored side by 
side. In a word, social and industrial life was 
revolutionized. The qualities which count for na- 
tional success and grandeur are no longer purely 
warlike or artistic; industrial capacity and skill now 
become absolutely essential. The warrior bows, 

4 



INTRODUCTION 

except under unusual circumstances, to the skilled 
mental or manual worker ; the engineer with his 
slide-rule displaces the epauletted soldier. The 
strongest nation is the one most efhcient from an 
industrial and commercial point of view. Indus- 
trial progress and educational advance began to 
assume important proportions early in the nine- 
teenth century. In preceding centuries both in- 
dustry and education were overshadowed by other 
factors which were characteristic of a more primi- 
tive and disjoined state of human society. In early 
times industry was in a large measure left to slaves 
and serfs ; and education was confined to a narrow 
field and to a numerically restricted class of people. 
The sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
turies, however, foreshadowed coming events. The 
history of modern education can be properly studied 
only from the point of view of industrial evolution. 
The economist and the educator here join hands ; 
but unhappily neither has been able to grasp the 
real situation. Democracy, a wage-earning class 
and universal education are the social institutions 
which develop side by side out of the same soil, — 
one strengthens and protects the others. Early 
democracy was aristocratic; early education was 
likewise intended for the elect. The progress of 
democracy has been to admit one class after an- 
other into the charmed circle from which the ancient 
lowly were sternly excluded ; during the same time 
education has been broadening its scope and en- 
riching its content. These phenomena are not 

5 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

isolated and unrelated; they are intimately and 
vitally joined to each other. 

Two periods of scientific economic thought may 
be distinguished in the United States during the 
nineteenth century. The early period opened 
approximately with the educational revival of the 
2o's; and the second was formally ushered into 
existence by the organization, in 1885, of the 
American Economic Association. A new birth of 
economic thought seems to be approaching; econ- 
omists are becoming impatient with the old 
formulae. Theory and practice are drawing closer 
together; a new school of economists might almost 
be said to be in the process of formation. The 
concepts of education and of political economy held 
during the first half of the last century were nar- 
row, much narrower than those now generally 
accepted. The earlier political economy, as a rule, 
considered man to be an animal in whom all other 
ambitions, aims, desires and loves were subordi- 
nated to the desire for wealth getting. The theory 
was purely a mathematical or mechanical one. 
Accept the premises and the rest followed as a 
logical consequence; but the premises were falla- 
cious. The political economy of that period con- 
sidered the "fictitious" economic man; modern 
economic thought studies the real man, the man of 
many and mixed motives. As a necessary result 
of the expansion in the scope of economic science, 
the relation between economics and the science of 
education has become intimate and important. 
Economics is now a study of man in his endeavor 

6 



INTRODUCTION 

to obtain the necessities, comforts and luxuries of 
life. Man, not wealth, is placed in the foreground. 
Economic science is interested in the many complex 
problems which are connected with the production, 
distribution and consumption of economic goods — 
goods which men desire and which require effort 
to obtain. Production and distribution are only- 
means to an end, which end is the third, consump- 
tion of the material and immaterial goods, produced 
and distributed for the benefit and enjoyment of 
mankind. Judged from the point of view of the 
economic science this is, indeed, the ultimate end 
and aim of all human activity. In so far as edu- 
cation affects, in any manner, production, distribu- 
tion or consumption, or in so far as it changes or 
modifies the efficiency, the tastes or the ideals of 
men, it has an economic and a social significance. 
The growth of democracy and the increasing par- 
ticipation of the masses in political activity and in 
the educational heritage of the age are accompanied 
by the dawn of new economic and educational 
concepts. 

In recent decades the science of education, like 
economic science, has been passing through im- 
portant and fundamental modifications. The em- 
phasis has shifted from the leisure class ideal of 
education for culture and discipline to the indus- 
trial, utilitarian and democratic ideal of education 
as a means of improving civic and industrial 
efficiency. The older methods and concepts of 
education originated at a time when the older view 
of the workingman and of his sphere of life and 

7 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

activity was held. Education, except perhaps the 
three R's, was not, in earlier periods of our history, 
intended for the laboring man; it was only for the 
"cultured" classes. Students of educational prob- 
lems have only recently begun to recognize that 
society is no longer on a scholastic, feudal or mili- 
tary basis. Although education in the United 
States is free and compulsory, its growth has not 
been accompanied by that change in method and 
scope which should come with its extension to all 
classes in a democratic community. A modern 
democracy of the industrial type demands both an 
extension of educational privileges, and a departure 
from the traditional methods of instruction in order 
to fulfill the conditions necessary to prolonging its 
existence. The democratic view of education is 
just begmning to rise above the pedagogical hori- 
zon. Free compulsory education is not democratic, 
if it is of the kind and character which is valuable 
chiefly to the professional man, or to the man of 
leisure; nor is it democratic if it merely aims to 
increase the efficiency and speed of the employees 
in our great industrial establishments. Scientific 
engineering and financial questions have occupied 
the center of the stage during the last three or four 
decades ; the endeavor to solve these problems has 
finally pushed into the foreground an entirely new 
and unexpected set of allied problems belonging to 
the field of social science ; and is forcing them upon 
a reluctant society. Social, economic and educa- 
tional questions are to be of vital interest and im- 
portance in the immediate future. The political 

8 



INTRODUCTION 

need of universal education has been particularly 
emphasized in the United States; it has often been 
thought of merely as a training for citizenship and 
for casting the ballot on election day. To-day, 
while not minimizing in the least the importance 
of this function, a far wider concept is beginning 
to rise above the educational horizon, heralding the 
dawn of a new pedagogical day. The economic 
and social functions of education are to be em- 
phasized during this new era. If education per- 
forms its duty in this respect, good citizenship is 
the natural fruitage. If education is to light the 
path over which the car of progress is to pass, it 
must not only open its arms to all, but it must 
provide nourishment which is adapted to the edu- 
cational requirements of all classes of individuals. 
In the past all educational innovations have laid 
stress upon those elements which were least im- 
portant to the mass of the people. In colonial 
New England compulsory education was insisted 
upon on religious grounds in order to benefit a 
puritanical priesthood or ministerial element. 
Great stress was laid upon higher education, — the 
classics, theology, literature. The motive for ele- 
mentary education was purely religious. When 
scientific training was first introduced, special em- 
phasis was laid upon advanced work and research 
rather than upon the more elementary work, — the 
dissemination of the results of research among the 
mass of the people. Technical education and 
manual training receive better financial support in 
the college and high school than in the elementary 

9 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

school where the value of these branches to the 
mass of the people is particularly great. Our 
university and college professors and high school 
teachers are better paid and more highly honored 
than the grade school teacher. Indeed there is a 
gradation of salary and honor from university pro- 
fessors to the primary teacher; yet, pedagogically 
and sociologically considered, the latter is of 
greatest importance. Education began v^ith the 
abstract and the far away, rather than as common 
sense and pedagogical science teaches, with the 
concrete and the near-at-hand. This fact can be 
explained on the basis of conflict of economic in- 
terests. Only within a few generations has the 
working class reached a position in the community 
from which they are able to effectively voice their 
demands. Higher education remains, in many 
cases, still merely a form of what Veblen calls con- 
spicuous waste. The so-called "finishing school" 
may be classed under the head of conspicuous 
waste. The sons of many wealthy men do not go 
to college because of a thirst for knowledge, but 
because it will give them social prestige. College 
life is conceived to be a form of club life. In Bel- 
gium, Germany and France, where the social spirit 
is better developed, where the frontier influence has 
not been felt for generations, the education of the 
masses, — useful education as contrasted with orna- 
mental and purely disciplinary education — has ad- 
vanced further than in the United States. 

The educator, like the politician, has in the past 
clung to the theory that well-defined class demarka- 

10 



INTRODUCTION 

tion does not exist in America; but recent in- 
novations in education disclose an unconscious 
modification. It must soon be consciously and un- 
reservedly accepted that there are classes and con- 
flicting interests on this side of the Atlantic; and 
we must act accordingly. Leaders in education 
must recognize the existence of great social and 
economic inequalities, and must strive to reduce to a 
minimum the differentiations which are undesirable 
and which lead toward class hatred and class 
exploitation. History in modern times is a record 
of the struggle of the workers upward toward 
equal political, educational and economic privileges. 
The great movements in history have been con- 
sciously or unconsciously dominated by the strug- 
gle for a living, for economic betterment. The 
school, the college, the university and the profes- 
sional schools should calmly and impartially in- 
vestigate and teach the facts which social and 
industrial evolution present. When this is not the 
case, education may be, and frequently is, perverted 
from its true mission ; it becomes an engine which 
builds up and strengthens class animosity and social 
rigidity. Education should benefit all classes, agri- 
cultural, commercial, industrial and professional, 
and the subdivisions within each of these classes. 
In the eye of the educator each should be of equal 
value. The school has hitherto been unduly in- 
fluenced by the ideals, and has taught the ethics, 
the morals and principles which the commercial 
and propertied classes have upheld. It has entirely 
overlooked the fact that the ethical code of the 

II 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

industrial worker and the ethical code of the agri- 
culturist are both of necessity different from this 
and from each other. In the future, if education 
is to perform its proper functions, a somewhat 
different set of ideals must find a place in our 
scheme of education. 

Industry and education in early days went hand 
m hand. "Under Medievalism the guild and the 
university were not far apart." Early formal edu- 
cation was, however, directed chiefly toward letters 
and literature. The present-day separation of in- 
dustry and education is a result of the carrying 
down of old conceptions into modern times. When 
science, industry, commerce and agriculture were 
first recognized as proper fields for school work, 
it was natural, perhaps inevitable, that machinery 
and methods similar to those which had been ap- 
plied to the teaching of the classics and mathematics 
should still be used. The segregation of students, 
rigid class systems, the isolation of the students 
from the practical things of life, and the cultivation 
of the scholastic ideals, are, with slight modifica- 
tions, still adhered to. But a reaction is at hand. 
The problem is to develop along with the purely 
cultural and disciplinary vv^ork of education, new 
functions which will increase the industrial, social 
and civic efficiency of young men and young 
women in the present industrial era. Both gov- 
ernment and education need ''democratising" in the 
best sense of the term. Education is now concerned 
with much more than the teaching of reading, 
writing, arithmetic, geography, political history. 



INTRODUCTION 

languages, literature, and the like; it must be an 
integral and vital part of the experience of every 
future efficient member of the community. 

The recent modifications and additions to the 
curriculum are indicative of unrest or of dissatis- 
faction with educational results. Our educational 
machinery has proved inadequate because it was 
only adapted to the performance of certain limited 
tasks. Great modifications are necessary in order 
to construct a system which will perform the varied 
and complex educational work which should be 
done to-day. New and fundamental concepts re- 
garding educational principles are now needed 
which square with centralized and systematized 
industry, subdivision of labor, large urban popula- 
tions, increase in the numbers of the laboring 
population, the growth of organized labor, dis- 
similar populations, enlarged governmental activi- 
ties, and a democratic form of government. When 
our public-school system was devised only one of 
these conditions, the latter one, was in existence. 
Just as our representative form of government has 
broken down in an unanticipated way, so has our 
educational system failed to respond fully to the 
last call of the nineteenth, and the first demands 
of the twentieth century. In the educational, as 
in the political world, a bitter struggle is being 
carried on between those standing for the old and 
those advocating a newer, less individualistic con- 
ception and philosophy; and the latter are daily 
gaining ground. 

13 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

Public education has for its goal the welfare of 
the individual in society, and of society itself. 
Urban populations and world markets have taken 
away much of the old, illusory freedom of the 
individual; he can at present do little for himself. 
Organized society must now do much which it 
formerly omitted. Cooperation is the watchword 
of to-day. Society must concern itself with the 
economic and social welfare of each and every 
individual member. Society controls through the 
state one of the great institutions. — the school — 
which molds, develops and strengthens its future 
adult members. The school of to-day is distinct- 
ively a social institution. It aims at producing 
more than the intelligent citizen; it also seeks to 
produce the efficient worker, the efficient consumer, 
the morally and physically well-developed man or 
woman. Improvement of men, environment and 
institutions are the three prime essentials in the 
betterment of society; better educational methods 
and ideals are necessary in order that the work 
along the three interrelated lines may follow the 
much searched after path of least resistance. True 
education in the broadest sense of the term, in- 
volving both teaching and research, which is con- 
cerned with the improvement of men, the material 
and social environment, and of the legal, economic, 
political and religious institutions is then the vital 
and fundamental problem of modern times. To 
vitalize education, to keep it abreast with the 
demands of our social and industrial life is the 

14 



INTRODUCTION 

problem which now confronts us; and much has 
been accomplished in recent years. 

In the case of a primitive people where division 
of labor was not practised to any important degree, 
all received practically the same training. Each 
was his own carpenter, farmer, smith and hunter. 
The duties of one man were similar in character 
and importance to those of any other member of the 
tribe or horde. In the case of modern society this 
is entirely changed. Differentiation of occupation 
is the basis upon which the complex structure of 
modern society is erected. In recent years the 
feeling that education is not accomplishing its true 
mission has manifested itself in a variety of forms. 
There has been a groping in the dark for something 
which will allow our educational system to supply 
those forms of training which recent industrial 
change and progress have caused to be dropped 
from the life of the average man. This groping 
in the dark is the result of the emphatic demand 
by the masses of the people for a "practical" edu- 
cation, — something which will aid them in their 
struggle for a livelihood. Advocates of the old, 
purely intellectual education may scoff at this in- 
novation, this so-called debasement of educational 
ideals, this catering to the "common herd"; but it 
is demanded by the great mass of citizens whose 
will is registered at the polls and in the great arena 
of public opinion. A new class is rising into the 
saddle. The public schools and the state univer- 
sities are the most susceptible to public opinion, 
and in these we find the greatest progress. Private 

15 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

institutions, supported by endowments and private 
beneficence, are normally the strongholds of con- 
servatism in education and in economic thought ; 
but, on the other hand, private initiative usually 
clears the path for pubhc action. Manual training, 
nature study, kindergartens, night schools, evening 
lectures, correspondence schools and pla) grounds 
are some of the direct results of educational agita- 
tion and unrest. These measures, while valuable 
and desirable, do not go to the root of the evil. 
We must reach the large percentage of American 
children who leave school at an early age ; we must 
place practical, industrial and general education 
within the reach of the boy or the girl who is 
working, and it must be made to be an advantage 
to him or her to accept it ; we must modify our 
conception of the aims, methods, and ideals of 
education. 

Education is a fundamental measure by means 
of which the mass of the people can be helped; 
and that education is best which treats of those 
thmgs which are near to and easily attainable by 
the masses. Classical and cultural studies are per- 
haps ideals toward which we may gradually bend 
our efforts ; but high and lofty ideals as portrayed 
in art and literature do not appeal to the man who 
is seeking a job, or to the one who needs to know 
how to use his hands. Attention must first be paid 
to those things close to the every-day life of the 
poorer classes ; we must utilize the threads of ex- 
perience obtained by them in their daily life. 
Improvement of the individual is not a universal 

i6 



INTRODUCTION 

panacea for all the ills of our social and industrial 
life; but until measures are taken to educate the 
great masses of the people for industrial life, other 
desirable measures are rendered practically futile. 
The latter resemble efforts to purify a putrid stream 
directed at a point far below the source of pollution. 
The efforts of reformers of all kinds, of labor 
unions, of charitable enterprises, and of philan- 
thropic individuals are only of comparatively little 
value while a great mass of inefficient, unskilled, 
ignorant people contented with a low standard of 
living exist. Education of the industrial and social 
type can go to one of the sources of the difficulty, 
and enable other essential measures to obtain more 
efficient results. 

In the past, nations and races have unceasingly 
passed through a cycle which led finally to de- 
generacy, decay and subjection to stronger, more 
virile, because more primitive, races. In the United 
States the enormous increase in wealth and the 
enlargement of the leisure class, especially in the 
case of the weaker sex, indicate that this nation is 
reaching a point in her national history which, if 
she is to follow the cycle traced by older nations, 
presages national degeneration. The problem of 
the twentieth century is to make education an 
engine for social betterment. Hitherto, educa- 
tional progress has been conditioned by economic 
and social changes. Have we advanced far enough 
on the path of civilization to make it, in a measure, 
a directive agent? — is the question. Only through 
the study of industrial evolution can we hope to 
2 17 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

discover the lines of development which lie just 
ahead, and thus be enabled to utilize education in 
order to hasten social progress. Any modern edu- 
cational theory which does not rest back upon the 
basis of social and economic needs and progress is 
sterile and unscientific. If pedagogy or education 
is to be permanently ranked among the sciences, 
it must find data in addition to that furnished by 
cultural imperatives and psychological investiga- 
tions. 



i8 



PARTI 

THE MODERN EDUCATIONAL 
PROBLEM 



CHAPTER II 

EDUCATIONAL EPOCHS IN THE UNITED 
STATES 

Although our pubHc-school system is in some 
respects the most characteristic of all American 
mstitutions, a careful study of the fundamental, 
underlying forces which produced our educational 
progress has not yet been published. Few attempts 
have been made to study the forces or combina- 
tion of forces which produced the transformation 
from the narrowly intellectual, semi-private, semi- 
religious basis upon which education rested during 
the colonial period, to the broad intellectual, indus- 
trial and social basis upon which the public-school 
system of to-day is placed. The world's progress is 
accomplished not by steady, stately strides, but by 
leaps and bounds separated by periods of com- 
parative quiescence or even of apparent retrogres- 
sion. In like manner our educational advancement 
which is a resultant of our industrial and social 
development, is not uniform but Irregular. Edu- 
cational progress Is slow during one period, and 
rapid during another epoch. Educational progress 
Is secondary to Industrial and social advance, and 
consequently lags somewhat behind It In point of 
time. Periods of greatest economic activity are 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION • 

followed some years later by educational activity, 
unless some disturbance or agitation turns the cur- 
rent into other channels. Education is ever vainly 
attempting to catch up with the car of progress. 
It follows industrial change as would a freight car 
follow a locomotive, if attached to the latter by a 
long elastic coupling. The engine would, in start- 
ing, move much faster than the car, but when 
approaching its destination the car would move 
more rapidly than the engine. Educational aims, 
ideals and methods are farthest out of step with 
the needs of the time when near the close of a 
period of prosperity, at a time when business and 
industrial activity is at its height. Educational his- 
tory should be an orderly account of the educational 
needs, and of the progressive and conservative 
forces which mold the educational institutions of 
different historic periods. 

At least three distinct periods or epochs in the 
development of our educational system may readily 
be discerned, and it is probable that we are entering 
upon a fourth. These periods are eras of edu- 
cational agitation and progress. In the intervals 
between two epochs, progress is slower or not dis- 
cernable. The early educational activity in New 
England constitutes the first epoch. It includes 
the latter portion of the seventeenth century and 
the opening years of the eighteenth. The ''Edu- 
cational Revival" of 1820 to 1850 clearly constitutes 
the second epoch. The third extends from approxi- 
mately 1875 to 1895 or 1900; and the fourth period, 
if such there is, began with the new century. In 



EDUCATIONAL EPOCHS 

the first two periods education was purely an 
intellectual matter. The common school was only- 
utilized to teach reading, writing and arithmetic. 
Not until the later years of the second period did 
history, geography or grammar find a place in the 
curriculum of the majority of the elementary 
schools. In the third period industrial and scientific 
education arises; manual training, domestic science, 
nature study, elementary physics and chemistry, 
and other branches of study are introduced into 
the curriculum. In the fourth period education 
assumes a distinctly paternalistic attitude toward 
the child ; it is now considered to be an integral and 
vital part of the life of every human being. "Edu- 
cation is life.'' 

The discussion of the first period may be con- 
fined entirely to New England. The early New 
England settlers were, with unimportant excep- 
tions, middle-class Englishmen who were Calvinists. 
These settlers were a sturdy, independent class of 
men and women. The Norman conquest trans- 
planted to England a new feudal aristocracy, and 
gradually changed the "Old-English thanehood 
into the finest class of rural gentry and yeomen 
that has ever existed In any country."^ Social 
differentiation was not considerable until after the 
Revolution. The colonists brought with them 
English customs, traditions, law and government. 
These Institutions were modified to meet the wants 
of a new environment far from the Interfering 
hand of the English government. In short, the 

^John Fiske, The Beginnings of New England, p. 30 
23 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

colonists tried to make New England an improved 
and purified copy of Old England. While they 
accepted and adhered to many radical doctrines as 
to the rights of man, they continued the English 
common law with important modifications, they 
restricted the suffrage, and they did not hesitate 
to imprison debtors. England experienced, from 
the middle of the sixteenth century and into the 
early part of the seventeenth century, an im- 
portant educational awakening; many schools, 
chiefly grammar, were established to take the place 
of those destroyed when the monasteries were sup- 
pressed.^ The Puritans had been accustomed to 
schools, and consequently soon after their arrival 
on New England soil the formation of a school 
system was attempted. 

The belief in Calvinism was an important factor 
in the educational history of this early epoch. 
''One of the cardinal requirements of democratic 
Calvinism has always been elementary education 
for everybody. In matters of religion all souls are 
equally concerned and each individual is ultimately 
responsible for himself. The Scriptures are the 
rule of life, and accordingly each individual ought 
to be able to read them for himself, without de- 
pendence upon priests. Hence, it is one of the 
prime duties of a congregation to insist that all 
members shall know how to read, and, if necessary, 
to provide them with requisite instruction. In 
accordance with this Calvinistic idea some form of 

^ Jos. Shafer, The Origin of the System of Land Grants 
for Education. 

24 



EDUCATIONAL EPOCHS 

universal and compulsory education sprang up dur- 
ing the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries wher- 
ever Calvinism had become dominant, — in the 
Protestant parts of France and Switzerland, in 
Scotland, in the Netherlands, and in New Eng- 
land."^ Calvinism *'has proved one of the chief 
forces on promoting the education of the common 
people, and in fostering higher education in the 
modern world."^ The English people "had also 
a strong feeling of the solidarity of responsibility 
which emphasized the evils inflicted upon the whole 
people, by the wrong acts of individuals and the 
need of national unity."^ This feeling of mutual 
responsibility played a considerable role in pro- 
moting education ; and the weakening of the ties 
as the settlements grew larger and more numerous, 
and as the settlers became more and more inde- 
pendent of each other, partially accounts for the 
relatively diminished interest in education of a 
later period. This clannish feeling found express 
sion in the first educational enactment passed in 
Massachusetts in 1642. The selectmen of the towns 
were given power to investigate as to the training 
of all children under their jurisdiction, and au- 
thority was granted to impose fines upon any and 
all persons who refused to educate their children, 
or to render an account, when demanded, to the 
selectmen. Indeed, this act amounted to a com- 
pulsory educational law, but it did not provide 

* Fiske, The Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America, 
Vol. 1:33. 

^ New International Encyclopedia, article on Calvinism. 
^Patten, Development of English Thought, p. 120. 
25 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

teachers or schools. Education was left to home 
instruction, private tutors, or private schools. It 
was held that every head of a family was in duty 
bound to educate his children in order to promote 
the moral and religious well-being of the com- 
munity. 

This act was similar in its nature to our modern 
sanitary laws which require every householder to 
keep his house and yard in a healthful and clean 
condition so that his home will not become a 
menace to the community, and a focus of infection. 
Elementary education was at this time in the handi- 
craft or household stage, and was primarily de- 
manded for religious reasons. Family instruction 
was sometimes supplemented by the work of teach- 
ers who gathered a few children about them. 
Teaching was carried on m.uch as was shoemaking 
or tailoring. The teacher found his counterpart 
in the itinerant journeyman of the period. Indeed, 
public bounty was first extended by the General 
Court, not to what we now call the common schools, 
but to the colleges. However, a few years later, 
in 1647, the date of the second Massachusetts law, 
we find supplemented by family instruction, "the 
outlines of a complete system of popular education 
in Massachusetts — the elementary, the grammar or 
secondary schools and the college — all supported 
by the contributions of the people, private benefi- 
cence, public taxation and legislative grants."^ 
Towns of one hundred householders were ordered 
to set up a grammar school or pay a fine. In 1671 

^ Report of the Bureau of Education, 1893-1894. 
26 



EDUCATIONAL EPOCHS 

and again in 16S3 the penalties for non-compliance 
with this statute were increased. The first period 
was distinctly a middle-class educational era. 
There was in fact no other influential class in the 
communijty. The important and characteristic 
grade of schools during this epoch was the gram- 
mar school. 

The town was the original unit in school govern- 
ment; but the system of local control and the 
strong bias against anything savoring of centralized 
authority led to the further subdivision into school 
districts for the purpose of directing educational 
affairs. With the development of the district sys- 
tem naturally and inevitably came the decline of 
the famous grammar school and the rise of the 
private academy. This marks the beginning of an 
educational declension which, it has been asserted, 
set in before the end of the seventeenth century. 
"This declension is commonly ascribed to the wars 
with the Indians and the French that wasted the 
blood and treasure of the colony; the political and 
social contentions that disturbed its peace; the un- 
certain relations that existed between Massachusetts 
and the Mother Country, and internal economic' 
and social changes.^'^ The powers granted to 
school districts were gradually increased down to 
about 1826. At which time only two limitations 
were placed upon their authority in regard to the 
management of the schools of the district: (i) 
The raising and apportionment of taxes, and (2) 
the qualifications of teachers. This marks the 

■• Hinsdale, Early Education in Massachusetts, p. 9. 
27 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

extreme limit of decentralization in school affairs. 
The academy is simply a visible token of the decline 
of the grammar school, and shows that the 
wealthier members of the community wished to 
obtain better education for their children than could 
be received in the district schools. So while on the 
one hand the district system led toward democracy, 
on the other it increased class differentiation and 
antagonism. The demand for centralization which 
came with the second epoch, commonly called the 
period of educational revival, was coincident with 
the growth of cities, the increase of manufacture 
and of mutual interdependence. The interdepend- 
ence of this era was due to the birth of division of 
labor and specialization of industry, and led even- 
tually to what the socialists call ''class conscious- 
ness." Horace Mann "stands in history as the 
representative of the urban school." The culmina- 
tion of the development of the district is con- 
temporaneous with the high water mark in New 
England of individualism, the theory of natural 
rights and of a laisse faire policy. The second edu- 
cational period ushers in the demand for centralized 
school administration, tax-supported free element- 
ary schools, and protection to American industries. 
The period of declension was an era of transition. 
Invention and progress in industry undermined the 
authority of the theocratic element and correspond- 
ingly increased the influence of the manufacturing 
and artisan classes. 

The causes of this phenomenon may be sum- 
marized as follows : ( i ) Wars and internal dis- 

28 



EDUCATIONAL EPOCHS 

sentions, and the formation of a new government, 
distracted the attention from the field of education. 
(2) The growth of the district system of educa- 
tional administration injured especially the grade 
of schools which had been considered most im- 
portant, namely, the grammar schools. (3) De- 
crease of mutual interdependence among the settlers 
and the consequent diminution in the strength of 
the spirit of clannishness. (4) Industrial progress 
which produced a new alignment of classes. At 
the end of this period of educational decline we find 
James G. Carter saying : "Under our present con- 
stitution, or for the last forty years, the schools 
have no doubt been vastly improved. But they 
have, most certainly, not kept up with the progress 
of society in other respects. Although their abso- 
lute motion must be acknowledged to have been 
onward, their relative motion has for many years 
been retrograde. And there never was a time, 
since the settlement of this country, when the com- 
mon schools were farther in the rear of the im- 
provements of the age in almost everything else 
affecting our condition and happiness than they are 
at the present moment."^ 

'"''The first half of the nineteenth century wit- 
nessed the gradual destruction of domestic industry 
and the development of the factory system. Im- 
provements and Ibventions in various lines of 
manufacture and communication followed each 
other in rapid succession. The Embargo Act, the 
War of 1812, the shipping regulations of foreign 

*"The Schools in 1824," Old South Leaflets, No. 135. 
29 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

nations adopted subsequent to the war, and the 
westward movement tended to rapidly shift capital 
and enterprise, particularly in New England, from 
commerce to manufacture. Canal and railroad 
building followed, immigration multiplied rapidly, 
the towns increased in size and importance, manu- 
facture became an important economic interest. In 
1790 Massachusetts had a population of 378,787 
souls; fifty years later, in 1840, the number was 
737,700, an increase of 94.75 per cent. During 
the same period the city of Boston increased in 
population 409.73 per cent. The number of people 
engaged in manufacture in Massachusetts increased 
from 33,464 in 1820, to 85,176 in 1840; in Rhode 
Island, from 6,091 to 21,271 ; in New York, from 
60,038 to 173,193; or the numbers engaged in 
manufacture in the three states were approximately 
trebled in a score of years. In Massachusetts dur- 
ing the same period the number of persons engaged 
in commerce decreased from 13,301 to 8,063; and 
the number engaged in agriculture increased from 
63,460 to 87,837. In New York, in 1840, only 
28,468 persons were engaged in commercial pur- 
suits.^ Such sweeping changes in social and indus- 
trial conditions is indicative of unrest and agitation. 
This was an intensely dynamic period ; social ideals, 
home life, customs, are all subjected to new in- 
fluences. 

By 1830 imprisonment for debt was practically 
abolished, manhood suffrage was attained in nearly 

* See Tucker, Progress of the United States; and Ckick- 
ering, On Population and Immigration. 

30 



EDUCATIONAL EPOCHS 

all states, and the Congressional Caucus had dis- 
appeared. Following the hard times of 1819-1821, 
arose the great humanitarian movements of the 
epoch, including, among others, the development of 
labor organizations, the communistic settlement 
movement, and the demand for public tax-supported 
schools. Many of the humanitarian movements 
led directly to, or were finally overshadowed by, 
the anti-slavery agitation of the period immediately 
preceding the Civil War. At this time in the face 
of the westward migration and under normal con- 
ditions, the labor movement could not attain great 
strength. The demand for tax-supported schools, 
however, succeeded in the northern and western 
states. This period of educational awakening and 
social agitation established this principle in these 
sections of the United States so firmly that it has 
never been dislodged, and it is not now questioned. 
Education was transferred from a charity or rate 
basis to a free public system supported by taxation, 
and it was completely severed from religious 
control. 

The arguments which were presented during this 
period of agitation in favor of free tax-supported 
schools may be summarized as follows: (i) Edu- 
cation increases production. (2) It diminishes 
crime. (3) It prevents poverty. (4) Education 
is a natural right of all men. (5) Universal edu- 
cation is necessary to preserve free republican 
institutions. (6) Free schools prevent class dif- 
ferentiation. The first three arguments are eco- 
nomic and appealed to practically all reputable 

31 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

citizens; the fourth put the matter on an ethical 
basis and invoked the authority of the Declaration 
of Independence and of other Revolutionary litera- 
ture. It received the support of the laboring classes 
and of the humanitarians of the period. The last 
two arguments were urged from a civic standpoint. 
The last three arguments, particularly the fourth 
and the sixth, did not receive the hearty support of 
the wealthy, large tax-paying class. In general, 
remembering that there are exceptions, we may 
characterize the opposing forces as follows : In 
favor of tax-supported public education for all 
children, the workingmen and non-taxpayers, the 
cities, and the Calvinists ; opposed to this system of 
schools, the upper classes and the taxpayers, the 
rural districts, and the Lutherans, Quakers and 
similar sects. Such a statement, so contrary to 
many preconceived notions, is supported by a mass 
of details.' Only a portion of the evidence can be 
here presented. 

The attention should first be called to the evident 
fact that the progress of the world for centuries 
has been toward the betterment of the working 
classes ; therefore it seems reasonable to argue 
a priori that, if progress continues, the program of 
the working people and non-property owners of 
one generation will be partially, at least, adopted 
by all classes of society in the next. As long as 
progress is synonymous with the uplift of the 
workers and the downtrodden, so long will their 
program, rather than that of the business or profes- 
sional men, represent progress. The latter classes 

32 



EDUCATIONAL EPOCHS 

in the community act as a flywheel which steadies 
progress and prevents disaster ; but they always 
stand for controlling or modifying, not impelling, 
forces. This view is particularly illuminating when 
we take up the consideration of the present period 
of educational development. 

" During the 2o's and 30's, labor union after labor 
union formally declared in favor of free universal 
education. Many periodicals sprang into existence 
to press these demands. In November, 1829, at a 
meeting of organized workers in New York, reso- 
lutions were adopted demanding for every child "a 
complete and systematic course of instruction, — 
at public expense." They urged "that the public 
funds should be appropriated (to a reasonable ex- 
tent) to the progress of education upon, a regular 
system that shall insure to every individual the 
opportunity of obtaining a competent education 
before he shall have arrived at maturity." As early 
as 1799 the Mechanic's Association of Providence 
demanded free public schools. The Equal Rights 
Party of New York City, among other things, 
pledged (1837) themselves "to procure a more 
extended, equal and convenient system of common 
school instruction." Stephen Simpson in his book 
entitled, A Manual for Workingmen, presents 
the following view of the situation in 183 1 : "The 
text of the friends of liberty was — to enlighten the 
people is to promote and cement the public virtue. 
The soundness of this text was never questioned 
anterior to the organization of a party [the Work- 
ingmen's Party], whose object it was to obtain it 
3 33 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

from the legislature, as a right unjustly withheld. 
When public instruction was bestowed as a boon 
of charity, it found numerous advocates and met 
with no opponents ; but now, when we justly demand 
it as a right and not as a charity — it is not only 
refused by some, but to our utter amazement, its 
consequences painted as baleful to the people and 
deprecated as having a fatal tendency upon the 
good order of government." It is needless further 
to enumerate the resolutions passed by workingmen 
and their representatives, but it seems appropriate to 
introduce the testimony of T. H. Green as to the 
forces which promoted public education in England. 
"If factory regulation had been attempted, though 
only in piece-meal way, some time before we had a 
democratic house of commons, the same can not be 
said of the educational law. It was the parliament 
elected by the more popular suffrage in 1868 that 
passed, as we know, the first great educational act. 
That act introduced compulsory schooling." 

In the cities a large percentage of the people were 
workingmen and small taxpayers, and in the cities 
the need of educational facilities was clearly urgent. 
There were also better opportunities in the cities for 
carrying on an agitation on this, or any other sub- 
ject. If we omit for the present Pennsylvania, 
where religious and national differences compli- 
cated the question, the antagonism is quite clearly 
marked between the cities and rural districts. In 
1799, in Rhode Island, a local option school law 
was passed. Providence alone took advantage of 
this law. Four years later it was repealed by the 

34 



EDUCATIONAL EPOCHS 

votes of the remainder of the state. The first free 
schools in Pennsylvania were provided in the city 
of Philadelphia. New York State, however, offers 
the most convincing and spectacular example of 
the antagonism between the cities and the rural dis- 
tricts in regard to tax-supported public schools. 
In March, 1849, the New York legislature passed 
an "Act establishing free schools throughout the 
State." The schools were to be free to all persons 
between the ages of five and twenty-one. Local 
taxation was provided to supplement the state tax. 
A referendum was allowed on this proposed law; 
the vote was 249,872 for, and 91,951 against, the 
law. Four rural counties only gave majorities 
unfavorable to the law. In New York county the 
vote was 21,052 for, and only 1,313 against. When, 
however, an attempt was made to put the law in 
operation, much hostility was manifested. "Many 
of the heaviest taxpayers had no direct interest in 
the schools; and in general wherever they consti- 
tuted a majority of the legal voters of a district, they 
refused all appropriations for the support of the 
school beyond the four months required by law."^ 
In 1850 the question of a repeal of this law was 
referred to the people. Forty-two out of fifty-nine 
counties favored the repeal, but the large majority 
given by the remaining seventeen was sufficient to 
prevent such action. The cities of New York, 
Brooklyn, Albany, Buffalo, Schenectady, and Syra- 
cuse were located in these counties. These cities 

* Randall, Common School System of Nezv York. 
35 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

prevented the repeal of this law ; the issue was 
clearly drawn. 

Pennsylvania passed through a similar experience 
in 1834 and 1835. The law passed in 1834 en- 
countered bitter opposition. "There were taxes, 
and there is no more certain method of stirring up 
the public opinion of a virtuous, thrifty and frugal 
people, such as then inhabited Pennsylvania, than 
by pricking their pocketbooks. They were willing 
to have reform, provided it did not come high, or 
they were not compelled to pay for it. A violent 
reaction arose. Nearly half of the districts in the 
State rejected the act or contemptuously ignored 
it."^ Another phase of the opposition exhibits a 
striking similarity to the present opposition to legal 
limitations of the hours of labor and to other laws 
relating to the working people. "But these oppon- 
ents of free education object to any compulsory 
proceedings on the part of the State, alleging that 
a law of this character, if passed, would be in viola- 
tion of the liberty of the citizen, who has a right to 
do as he pleases, to worship God or not, as he 
pleases, to educate his children or not, as he pleases, 
and to live free from any restraint of any kind, 
whether civil or moral."- Martin, in his Evolution 
of the Massachusetts School System, makes the 
following pertinent observations: "It is curious 
to see how long the higher social circles of the 
commercial towns — Boston, Salem and Newbury- 
port — clung to the old traditions, and how they 

* McCall, Life of Stevens, p. 35. 
2D. B. Duffield, Barnard's Journal, Vol. III. 
Z6 



EDUCATIONAL EPOCHS 

resisted the encroachments of that leveHng spirit 
which would break down the old social barriers. 
Thus in Newburyport, in 1790, when it was pro- 
posed to open primary schools for girls at public 
expense, the school committee of clergymen, doc- 
tors, squires and captains recommended that all 
girls who attended these schools should be consid- 
ered as recipients of public charity. This the town 
rejected."^ 

The opposition in Pennsylvania was increased 
by the differences in nationalities and religious be- 
liefs among the inhabitants. Pennsylvania was set- 
tled by a mixture of peoples, speaking different 
languages and adhering to different religious be- 
liefs. 'The new law (1833-1834) met with most 
favor in the northern counties. These had been 
settled principally by people from New England 
and New York, who had been accustomed to public 
schools and understood their advantages. It was 
comparatively well received in the counties west of 
the Alleghanles, where a diversity of wealth had 
not yet bred distinctions of class, and where dif- 
ferent nationalities and different religious de- 
nominations had become so thoroughly mixed as to 
recognize an educational interest in common. Op- 
position to it was most formidable in the southern, 
central and southeastern portions of the State, 
and greatest of all in the counties where the people 
were principally of German descent."^ 

* Martin, p. 143. 

^ Wickersham, History of Education in Pennsylvania, p. 
318. 

37 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

In 1835, in Pennsylvania, the Democratic party 
was split into two factions ; the question of free 
schools was one of the points of difference. The 
candidate of the wing opposing free schools was 
Rev. H. A. Muhlenberg, a Lutheran clergyman. 
This gentleman in a letter to the workingmen of 
Philadelphia, January 1836, stated the position of his 
countrymen thus : "The Germans of our State are 
not opposed to education as such, but only to any 
system which seems to trench on their parental and 
natural rights.'' As early as 1786 this prayer was 
introduced into the litany of the Lutheran church : 
"And since it has pleased Thee chiefly, by means 
of the Germans, to transform this State into a 
blooming garden, and the desert into a pleasant 
pasture, help us not to deny our nation, but to 
endeavor that our youth may be so educated that 
German schools and churches may not only be 
sustained, but may attain a still more flourishing 
condition."^ Another writer on education in Penn- 
sylvania tells us that ' "schools supported by the 
public were opposed by many of the wealthy class 
who had no sympathy with the doctrine of equality 
upon which the free schools were founded. Sev- 
eral religious denominations opposed the proposed 
law, since they were already maintaining at their 
own expense denominational schools for the pur- 
pose of inculcating the precepts of their faith. 
Many persons of German descent combated the 
free school idea because the instruction was to be 
given in the English language, and they feared 

* Quoted, Kuhns, German in Pennsylvania, p. 117. 
38 



EDUCATIONAL EPOCHS 

that it would result in the displacement of their 
mother-tongue."^ The victory for the free schools 
was won in Pennsylvania by the New England 
man and the urban centers. 

At the close of the second period the tax-sup- 
ported public school was a firmly established insti- 
tution. The value of education was considered, 
during this epoch, chiefly from three points of view, 
economic, civic, and ethical. New industrial and 
social conditions caused the agitation which over- 
came the opposition and transferred education 
from the rate or charity basis to a free, tax-sup- 
ported foundation. Educational advance during 
the period may be directly attributed to the pressure 
of the working class and the urban community. 
Following the close of the second period, the 
slavery agitation, the Civil War and the recon- 
struction so absorbed the attention of the public 
that, for a quarter of a century, educational progress 
was slow and bore no important fruit;>^ 

The third epoch is a revolutionary era, if judged 
from the point of view of the functions of the 
school. The second period is especially interesting 
to the student of economic and social questions, 
while the third presents phases which attract the at- 
tention of the psychologist and the educator. Here- 
tofore education had been purely an intellectual drill 
and discipline; the school was a mere intellectual 
gymnasium. This period opens by placing the em- 
phasis upon the industrial and psychological value of 

* Edmonds, History of the Central High School, Phila- 
delphia, p. 21, 

39 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

school work. A distinction must be drawn between 
the economic and the industrial value of education. 
It was recognized in the preceding epoch that edu- 
cation increased production, but its beneficial effect 
was then thought of as a secondary matter, or as a 
by-product. The educated man was conceived to 
possess good judgment and a high degree of 
efficiency; but the direct education of the hand and 
eye through the instrumentality of the school was 
not considered to be feasible or desirable. This 
period was also one of agitation and unrest. It, 
like the second, came after a severe depression 
which had been preceded by a war and a period of 
rapid industrial development. The most important 
educational innovations of the period are the gen- 
eral introduction of the laboratory, the kinder- 
garten, drawing, manual training, domestic science 
and physical training. The industrial changes 
which followed the Civil War still further reduced 
the educational functions of the workshop and of 
the home. Boys were growing up in the cities with 
little or no opportunity to practically or regularly 
use hand and eye in a useful or productive way, 
or to come into contact with industrial operations. 
The school was obliged to take up new functions, 
to do much of the work formerly done by the home 
and the shop. The school now becomes a powerful 
institution which molds the life, character and 
industrial capabilities of the youth. Every increase 
in its function and policy means a further departure 
from the old laisse faire policy. It is worthy of 
notice that at the time when manual training was 

40 



EDUCATIONAL EPOCHS 

beginning to be introduced into the public schools, 
the American Economic Association was founded. 
This association has stood from its inception for an 
extension of the power of the state and opposed to 
fhe laisse faire policy of the classical economists. 

The introduction of new functions into the public- 
school system has not been accomplished without 
opposition. Manual training and laboratory work 
have, however, generally received the hearty sup- 
port of the manufacturers, and the cooperation of 
the merchants has been secured through the addi- 
tion of commercial branches. Labor unionists and 
unaffiliated workingmen have not as a rule actively 
urged the adoption of manual training. They have 
felt that the work given was impractical, or, if 
practical, that it tended to increase competition in 
certain trades. They have, however, favored the 
introduction of the kindergarten, and provisions 
for free text-books. The workingmen have turned 
to private correspondence schools for practical 
assistance; but, in the near future, continuation 
schools modeled after those of Europe will prob- 
ably be included in the public system. When this 
is accomplished the sphere of usefulness of the 
correspondence school will be contracted. 

It was during the third epoch that the new science 
of pedagogy, if we may dignify it by the name of 
science, put forth its first shoots. The old ''reser- 
voir" notion as to educational methods became 
obsolete ; education grew to be something more 
than cramming facts and syntax. The child came 
to be recognized as a growing plant which must be 

41 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

supplied, if he is to develop properly, with certain 
material which must be presented in the proper 
form and at the proper time; and it was further 
perceived that the work of the school was condi- 
tioned by, and dependent upon, the experience 
given the child by the home, the playground and 
the shop, store, farm or office. The industrial and 
social environment which surrounded the child of 
the last quarter of last century was educationally 
deficient in many respects. Psychology and physi- 
ology have pointed out the necessity of certain 
forms of training — hand-work, eye-work, leg-work, 
etc. Industrial and psychological needs are the 
two cooperating forces which broadened the scope 
of education during this period, and developed the 
so-called educational *'fads." The progressive pro- 
fessional educator, the manufacturer and the busi- 
ness man joined hands, and they were not actively 
opposed by the workingmen. Manual training and 
domestic science were first introduced into the high 
schools, and only found tardy recognition in the 
grade schools where their psychological value is 
greater and their industrial value less than in the 
high school. When we remember that progress in 
society, like the motion of material objects, is merely 
the resultant of many forces, it is not difficult to 
account for this phenomenon. The manufacturers 
and business interests are naturally only directly 
concerned with manual training from an industrial 
point of view, and their interest was therefore cen- 
tered on high-school manual training and technical 
instruction of higher grade. The interests which 

42 



EDUCATIONAL EPOCHS 

advocated manual training from the scientific or 
professional standpoint were less effective if meas- 
ured by concrete results. Trade education has not 
been advocated from the psychological or peda- 
gogical point of view, and has, in many instances, 
been actively opposed by the workingmen. These 
facts are perhaps sufficient to account for its 
absence from the public-school system. 

The nation seems to be standing to-day on the 
threshold of a new educational epoch, — one which 
the future historian will be able to differentiate 
from the one which has been designated as the 
third. The fourth period promises to be intensely 
democratic, — semi-socialistic. At the outset two 
phenomena especially attract our attention, (i) 
The unskilled workers are for the first time exert- 
ing a powerful influence in the councils of labor 
unions; the new and rapidly developing form of 
labor organization is the industrial union, in con- 
tradistinction to the older trade union. (2) Wo- 
men's organizations or clubs, are beginning to 
exert a powerful directive influence upon social, 
political and educational affairs. Another impor- 
tant factor in the combination of forces is introduced 
by the entrance of women of the middle class into 
industrial and professional pursuits. In 1900 about 
one in every seven adult females living in the cities 
of the United States was a wage-earner. Women 
are no longer confined to the narrow round of home 
duties as they were in earlier generations. Whether 
this change in the life and work of women is bene- 
ficial or harmful need not here be discussed; the 

43 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

fact confronts us, and it tends to modify and 
farther enlarge the sphere of the modern school 
system. These three phenomena are the visible 
results of the action of forces which are, in no small 
measure, responsible for the educational progress 
of the last few years. The beginning of this era is 
marked by the transfer of the emphasis from the 
psychological to the social and recreational value of 
education. Sociological, rather than psychological 
considerations are now placed in the foreground. 

In this brief historical survey the attempt has 
been made to point out, in a general way, the rela- 
tion which has existed between educational advance 
and social and economic progress in the United 
States.^ The massing of these historical data fur- 
nishes the background for a more detailed con- 
sideration of the educational methods and needs 
of the present era. The science of education has 
been, and is to-day, greatly hampered because the 
real forces which cause and guide educational 
progress have not been seriously and patiently 
studied ; in reality these forces have, as a rule, been 
ignored or rejected by educators. Until the inti- 
mate relation between education and industrial 
evolution is clearly recognized, the newly born 
science of pedagogy or education can never become 
truly scientific. 

^ For a more detailed study of the first and second periods, 
see the author's monograph, Economic Influences upon Edu- 
cational Advance in the United States, 1820-1850. Bulletin 
of the University of Wisconsin, 1908. 



44 



CHAPTER III 

THE RELATION BETWEEN EDUCATIONAL 
ADVANCE AND INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS 

Writers and students who have turned their at- 
tention to educational problems have almost without 
exception given adherence to what may be called 
the '^great-man" theory of educational progress. 
They have maintained the thesis that educational 
advance has been chiefly, if not wholly, due to the 
efforts and the perseverance of certain great per- 
sonalities, who, by the sheer force of personal ability 
and merit, have pushed their particular contribution 
upon a reluctant public. During the first period of 
great educational activity in the United States, 
according to this theory, our educational progress 
was attributed to Horace Mann, Henry Barnard, 
James G. Carter, Samuel Lewis and others. With- 
out in any way depreciating the value of the labors 
of these able and earnest men, it is just and proper 
that recognition be given to the underlying social 
and economic conditions of which these men were, 
in reality, only the outward and visible manifesta- 
tions, and which produced the situation that enabled 
them to carry their propaganda to a more or less 
successful issue ; and which, indeed, indicated to 
them the need of such work and filled them with the 

45 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

zeal and ardor necessary to carry it out in the face 
of determined and powerful opposition. Mann 
and his associates exercised a "directive" influence, 
as Professor Lester F. Ward expresses it; but a 
further search must be made for the "impelling" 
forces. Only when the student comes to the more 
recent period of manual, scientific and commercial 
training, and of recreational education, does he find 
any important recognition of the underlying in- 
fluence of social and industrial changes. Even in 
this period little has been done except to point out 
in a general and casual way, the fact that industrial 
progress and the growth of cities have led to many 
haphazard additions to the curriculum, and have 
been the real cause of bitter conflicts between the 
"reformers" or ^'fadists," and the "conservatives." 
The reformer, educational or otherwise, is a prod- 
uct of his time ; if he is successful, it is because he 
has, in a measure, correctly interpreted the hitherto 
vague and undefined demands of the classes in the 
community which are rapidly rising in influence and 
importance. 

The many striking and important social and in- 
dustrial changes which have occurred during the 
last two or three decades, make many new demands 
upon our educational system. In recent years the 
broad conception of education as a lifelong process 
has been generally accepted. It is no longer con- 
ceived to be solely confined within the walls of 
school, college or university. Many different agen- 
cies — the home, the playground, the press, the pul- 
pit, the lecture platform, the library, the labor 

46 



EDUCATION AND INDUSTRY 

union, the store, the shop, the farm, the office, the 
society, — all supplement and complete the work of 
the school. In considering the duty and work of 
our public-school system at the present time, or at 
any other period, attention should be paid to the 
functions which these other institutions are able to 
perform at the time under consideration. The 
school is normally a time and labor-saving device, 
as well as an institution which forms the character 
and aids in the development of the individual, and 
in the progress of society. It should convey to the 
student the accumulated experience of past genera- 
tions, it ought to show the significance of his daily 
experience, and coordinate the latter with his studies 
and investigations; it ought to train him so that 
he can and will wish to continue his education by 
the aid of these other secondary educational agen- 
cies; and lastly, but not least, it should attempt to 
supply any deficiencies which change may develop 
in any one or all of these other agencies. The real 
function of the school is to adjust the individual 
to his environment — physical, industrial and social. 
In the study of educational problems at the 
present time, two important, but often overlooked 
or neglected, facts confront the investigator. In 
the first place, the social environment, the sum total 
of influences which bear upon the life of the in- 
dividual, has been increased in extent, — in other 
words, the entire world has been drawn closely 
into touch. People, intelligence, goods, now come 
from and go to the most distant parts of the globe 
quickly, surely and regularly. On the other hand, 

47 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

occupations and certain characteristics of home life 
have changed so as to tend to produce narrow views 
of life, and to confine the vast majority of indi- 
viduals within narrow grooves of action and 
thought ; the tendency is to cause the individual to 
live in ''parenthesis," disconnected from the great 
world thought and action. While modern com- 
munication and transportation, and world markets 
demand a broader life and tend to produce broad, 
liberal views of society and of the world; occupa- 
tions have been specialized and subdivided until the 
life of the majority of individuals is cramped. 
Our daily work and home environment, whether 
rural or urban, tend to contract and astigmatize 
our view at the very period when democracy and 
the idea of a community spirit should thrive and 
be actually transformed into a reality. This is 
indeed a grim paradox of modern industrial life. 

The earlier forms of industry gave the worker a 
relatively broad outlook; division of labor and 
specialization of industries tend to narrow this 
vision. As the division becomes more and more 
minute, the production of goods requires the co- 
operation of a constantly increasing number of 
workers. Each one forms but a link in a great 
industrial chain, and consequently sees only a 
minute part of the entire operation necessary to 
make the completed article. Machine production 
aims at making a uniform and interchangeable 
product. The workman is unfortunately bound 
down to a rigid and monotonous routine ; he be- 
comes in time almost automatic in his movements. 

48 



EDUCATION AND INDUSTRY 

He struggles blindly on, working and producing, 
without recognizing the end in view, without feel- 
ing that he, himself, is an integral and necessary 
factor in the formation and operation of a great 
industrial machine or organism. 

The. school must aim to demonstrate the social 
necessity of each worker's task, and to give a clew 
to the great, mtricate industrial labyrinth. The 
problem of the relation of labor to capital cannot 
be solved until the work and function of all factors 
of production are clearly understood by a majority 
of the people ; when such a condition obtains, the 
question of the proper distribution of wealth will be 
greatly simplified. The school attempts to meet 
the new economic conditions by enlarging its cur- 
riculum ; it now aims at more than mere mental 
training and discipline. Manual training, nature 
study, kindergartens, athletics, physical training, 
commercial trainmg, agriculture, domestic science, 
cooking, sewing, drawing, modeling, painting and 
music are now incorporated into the course of 
study. These added features are merely tentative 
attempts to give training which was formerly pro- 
vided outside the school, but which cannot be so 
provided under present conditions. Much of this 
work has been added in a haphazard manner, in 
order to fill a vaguely defined need, without proper 
arrangement or agreement with the older portion 
of the school curriculum. These additions, the 
direct result in many instances of a vigorous popu- 
lar demand, have increased the importance of the 
school, and have made it a more potent factor in 
4 49 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

the industrial, economic, and social progress of this 
country. Nevertheless, after this enlargement and 
enrichment of the course, there still remain many 
gaps in our educational system which are yet to be 
bridged over. 

The order in v^^hich these additions have taken 
place is fairly well defined. As scientific discover- 
ies and the practical applications of steam and 
electricity multiplied, our industrial methods un- 
derwent an almost complete transformation. A 
universal need for scientific and technical knowledge 
was felt. The first notable change from the time 
honored curriculum was made in response to this 
requisition. The physical sciences, physics and 
chemistry, were advanced to a position of equal 
rank with mathematics and language. Next ap- 
peared a demand for the kindergarten, manual 
training, drawing and domestic science. This was 
the result of a conscious or unconscious recognition 
of the undesirability of a wide separation of hand 
work from head work, aided by the call of manu- 
facturers for young men possessing trained hands 
and eyes. The need of such training was not 
urgent before the widespread development of the 
factory system. Treading on the heels of the 
manual-training movements came physical training, 
night and vacation schools, training for citizenship, 
nature study, school gardening, the study of agri- 
cultural science, and the special school for the 
truant and the "incorrigible." Not all of these 
additions to the work of the school are to be found 
in any one system, but each has been somewhere 

50 



EDUCATION AND INDUSTRY 

recognized as a desirable feature of the educational 
program. In general, it may be affirmed, that as a 
people pass from a semi-primitive agricultural stage 
with isolated, nearly independent families, to the 
more complex industrial life involving mutual in- 
terdependence and specialization of occupation, the 
importance of the education gained within the 
school increases relatively to that acquired outside. 
What is the significance of these changes to 
society? It seems indisputable that the importance 
of the school relatively to that of the home in the 
education of youth, has increased and is still in- 
creasing. This fact grows naturally out of the 
changed functions and environment of the home 
of the present, as compared with that of imme- 
diately preceding generations. Home training is 
highly individualistic; school training is not. The 
state educates the young in order to advance the 
welfare of society, in order to form the good 
citizen, — the efficient producer and consumer. The 
desired result is the elevation of the standard of 
living of society, — a social benefit. The mass can, 
however, be elevated only by acting upon each 
individual composing it. The school becomes so- 
ciety's agent for the promotion of its collective 
welfare; its purpose is chiefly directive. As so- 
ciety is recruited from the young, it is necessary 
that the incoming generations be worthy successors 
of the outgoing. The attention should be fixed 
upon those institutions which train the growing 
child, and not so much upon those corrective and 
repressive institutions which are needed because 

51 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

the early training and direction of their inmates 
were not what they should have been. Too much 
money is spent upon the diseased tree, but not 
enough on the growing twig. The functions of 
the school should include the intellectual, physical, 
industrial and moral training of the young, and of 
the older persons as well ; the greater the efficiency 
and effectiveness of the school, the less the need for 
corrective and repressive institutions. 

The cure for many industrial and social ills is to 
be found in the proper use of increased leisure 
which improved industrial methods makes possible, 
and which the modern ideal of democracy proclaims 
to be the birthright of each and all. Leisure makes 
possible study, social intercourse and the expansion 
of the life of the individual to the measure which 
the modern world community spirit demands. 

At the beginning of the last century the United 
States was a weak nation possessing an unknown 
immensity of undeveloped resources. In a century 
it grew to be one of the richest and most powerful 
nations of the earth, — an acknowledged great 
power. Development of resources was the demand 
and the necessity of the period. Exploitation of 
natural treasures and constant expansion was the 
program of the century. Resourceful, self-reliant, 
and individualistic men who were willing and able 
to devote untiring energy to the task of building up 
the material strength and resources of the nation, 
wcie needed, and became the familiar, successful 
and progressive type of American manhood. The 
fundamental, all-absorbing economic question was 

52 



EDUCATION AND INDUSTRY 

production which was carried on chiefly through 
the exploitation of natural resources. The rough 
and crude form of frontier life reacted upon the 
entire people, and left an imprint which many gen- 
erations will not entirely eradicate. As long as 
the frontier remained there was continual contact 
with the new and primitive. This type of civiliza- 
tion tended to continue and to perpetuate itself long 
after the conditions which caused it had passed 
into history. The frontier type of society is 
highly individualistic ; it resents the interference of 
organized society in any form. In such a com- 
munity might often spells right. It places little or 
no limitation upon the use or abuse of property. 
The right of the individual completely overtowers 
the right of society. 

After the disappearance of the frontier a dif- 
ferent set of conditions confronts the people of the 
United States. Widely separated farming com- 
munities or sparsely settled mining districts, and 
the presence of immense tracts of practically free 
land, demand one system of ethics, one code of 
human relations, and one kind of educational prin- 
ciples and precepts ; while densely populated cities, 
the scarcity of free land, and increased mutual 
interdependence make imperative a new scheme of 
social relations. The disappearance of the frontier 
induces a weakening of the individualistic and a 
strengthening of the social qualities of the American 
people. Sociological, as well as psychological, 
principles begin gradually and timidly to creep into 
the educational world. Society must adjust itself 

53 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

to a more crowded environment; and the problem 
is to make this adjustment along the lines of least 
resistance. New social, industrial, agricultural, 
commercial, educational, ethical and legal forms 
now become necessary. What is desirable and 
even highly commendable in a new, fertile, unde- 
>^eloped, and expanding country may become a 
positive menace and hindrance in an older, better 
developed, and more densely populated nation. 
New aims and new ideals are requisite to this ad- 
justment from the old to the new. Education now 
assumes a position of greater importance than it 
held in former generations. Changed environment, 
crowded cities, more intensive and more scientific 
agriculture, quicker and more regular methods of 
transportation and communication are producing 
effects which are plainly noticeable in the life, 
thought and action of the entire nation. It is, 
however, extremely difficult for a people schooled 
for generations in the university of self-reliance 
and of individual liberty to graciously accept the 
restrictions and modifications which this new era 
makes necessary; but such acceptance is inevitable. 
If education lags behind, rather than precedes, this 
changing sentiment, if it is merely passively carried 
along with the stream, instead of actively aiding in 
controlling its progress and direction, it fails utterly 
to effectively perform one of its most important 
duties — that of minimizing the friction of readjust- 
ment to a new environment and a new set of social 
and industrial conditions. This need of adjustment 

54 



EDUCATION AND INDUSTRY 

should be recognized by educators, and intelligently 
dealt with. 

The men of the present are not Robinson Crusoes, 
they live in a busy world peopled with millions of 
other similar fellow creatures. An individual is 
what he is because of the existence and influence 
of other men ; he is distinctly a social product. 
Development of the individual is the resultant of 
individualistic and of social demands ; but the latter 
are now beginning to take precedence over the 
former. Purely psychological and individualistic 
needs and desires must more and more be modified 
by those of a sociological character. Society is a 
complex and delicate organism or piece of mechan- 
ism; the wishes and ambitions of the individual 
must, in an increasing measure, be subordinated to 
and dovetailed into the needs of society considered 
as a whole. 

The disappearance of the frontier leads to the 
gradual elevation of the moral tone of the people. 
It is an important factor in assigning greater im- 
portance to questions of distribution and consump- 
tion. Business and political ideals are higher 
to-day than formerly. Many political methods 
which were in vogue as late as 1896, are not con- 
sidered to be in good form to-day. The doctrine 
that property is a social trust is gaining ground as 
it could not have done twenty or forty years ago. 
We are examining closely the methods employed 
in wealth production. The monopolist and the men 
of great wealth are now put on the defensive. 
Each must justify the social utility of his industrial 

55 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

power, or of his amassed fortune. Race solidarity 
and the brotherhood of men are now shibboleths. 
This spirit of brotherhood is first manifested be- 
tween members of the same trade or society — 
comparatively small groups ; but gradually it en- 
larges its scope and becomes more inclusive. To- 
day the laboring man is found preaching the 
solidarity and mutual interest of all workers in the 
United States — skilled and unskilled alike. A great 
strike is conducted upon a clear recognition of this 
principle, one which could hardly have arisen into 
consciousness if a great mass of fertile and easily 
accessible land was still our national heritage. 
Such a change as this calls insistently for new ideals 
in education. 

America is an enormous assimilative cauldron. 
Here are gathered nearly all the tribes and peoples 
of the earth in one great heterogeneous mass; and 
the public-school system is the official assimilator. 
It deals with the young and plastic. Excepting 
those who attend private and parochial schools, our 
laws bring all the children of the entire country 
under the influence of the public-school system. 
The immigrant comes to us from an entirely differ- 
ent environment; he has developed under different 
influences. His home life is not the same as ours ; 
his child possesses other concepts, traits and ideals 
than those of the American boy or girl. The pro- 
cess of assimilation usually means the molding of 
this people in conformity to the so-called Anglo- 
Saxon cast. It is forgotten that these people have 
many characteristics and traits which might well be 

56 



EDUCATION AND INDUSTRY 

grafted into our civilization and thus perpetuated. 
Miss Jane Addams has done much to emphasize 
this important fact. She points out that it is char- 
acteristic American ''complacency" to utterly ignore 
the past experience of the immigrant who comes to 
our shores. Ernest Crosby makes the indictment 
more sweeping and severe. "And not content with 
stifling the originality of the immigrant, we must 
needs carry our missionary zeal for uniformity to 
foreign lands in the hope of destroying all individ- 
uality. In Anglo-Saxonizing India and Japan we 
are crushing out the most wonderful of arts beyond 
a possibility of resurrection. We are the Goths 
and Vandals of the day. We are the Tartars and 
the Turks. And the countries which we overrun 
have each its own priceless heritage of art and 
legend which we ruthlessly stamp underfoot." 
Some attempt certainly should be made to preserve 
and continue the desirable traits and gifts of the 
different alien people who crowd to our shores, 
and to assimilate these traits into the sum total of 
our national characteristics. Few educators have 
as yet seen the possibilities and the desirability of 
progress in this direction. 

It should be noticed that not until after our 
frontier was practically a thing of historical sig- 
nificance only, did the immigration from Southern 
Europe begin. These people lack individual initia- 
tive; they live in little communities. With the rise 
of modern industrialism and of urban life, our 
civilization took on aspects which were attractive 
to the more docile and less individualistic emigrant 

57 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

of many sections of Europe. The traits of these 
people are more nearly consonant with the life of 
to-day than that of the early individualistic Anglo- 
Saxon frontiersman. The assimilation of these 
races and of their culture may modify our civiliza- 
tion and traits in a very desirable manner. A 
Greek immigrant, in a letter recently pubHshed, 
clearly states the proposition. 'Tn this country 
there is a great movement against the foreigners 
and especially those of Latin, Slavic and Jewish 
origin. The Latin and Jew (altruist and senti- 
mentalist) will give in this country some of their 
qualities that the northern people don't have. The 
Americans (egoists and individualists) need some 
of our blood to change their character in the next 
generation." There is, however, another side to 
this question which will be touched upon later. 

The rapid growth of cities has been a marked 
feature of recent growth and development. The 
city of to-day is the result of a rapid and unhealthy 
growth. People have been rudely drawn from a 
rural environment and quickly sucked into these 
great uneasy vortices of industry and trade. The 
ideals, customs, and habits of the rural community 
have gone with them to this new environment, and 
still cling with great tenacity. Only in recent years 
have the city dwellers awakened to the fact that 
they are really dwelling in an environment which 
calls for new, non-rural rules of action and of asso- 
ciation. The nature of the city itself has been 
modified. It is larger, more crowded, more de- 
pendent upon arteries of trade and transportation, 

58 



EDUCATION AND INDUSTRY 

and upon the supplies furnished from the outside. 
The race must adapt itself to urban conditions as 
they exist to-day ; we must learn to live and to 
thrive in densely populated centers. If the United 
States is to continue on its present course of ad- 
vancement and progress, the city must be made 
clean, healthy, moral, and it must be well governed. 
The majority of the successful business and profes- 
sional men of to-day were born in rural districts. 
In the past the country has furnished the bone and 
sinew of the city, and, as a necessary consequence, 
it has been drained of many of its best and most pro- 
gressive citizens. The city cannot indefinitely con- 
tinue its parasitic existence. Already one third of 
our population are urban dwellers. A much larger 
percentage of our successful and progressive men 
and women must in the future be drawn from the 
city-born and city-bred population; hence, the 
urgent need of improved conditions in our cities. 

The modern city is a mere industrial establish- 
ment; but it must be made a cluster of homes. 
Healthy and wholesome home surroundings can 
only be obtained through education as to the sani- 
tary and esthetic requirements of urban communi- 
ties; and these efforts must begin with the child. 
The cities have been "great sores upon the body 
politic," because they have experienced such a rapid 
development that society has been unable to modify 
itself rapidly and sufficiently to meet the require- 
ments of the situation. A twofold weakness of 
our educational system is revealed at this point. 
The curriculum and the methods of the city school 

59 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

have not been sufficiently modified to meet the re- 
quirements of children, living in a crowded city, 
with little opportunity for constructive work or 
heakhful recreation. Some progress has been 
made is. this direction as will be pointed out later, 
but there is still great need for further improve- 
ment. On the other hand the rural school has 
assisted in augmenting the growth of the cities and 
in encouraging the drift away from the farm. Its 
curriculum has absolutely ignored, with a few very 
recent exceptions, the fact that the farm presents 
problems which require education and training to 
solve. "Every book they [the country children] 
study leads to the city ; every ambition they receive 
inspires them to run away from the country ; the 
things they read about are city things ; the greatness 
they dream about is city greatness." The prob- 
lems connected with the city, those relating to labor, 
and all our great industrial and social questions, 
are at the root questions of education. 

However, after the faults of the city have been 
examined and laid bare, it is but just to recall that 
the cities have ever stood in a forefront of the 
educational advance and in the development of 
labor organizations. Our free tax-supported schools, 
for example, originated in the cities. A striking 
illustration of the position of the cities is found in 
the result of the referendum of 1850, which estab- 
lished free schools throughout the state of New 
York. The vote revealed a sharp division of urban 
against rural counties, and the former stood for 
progress and for better educational facilities. 

60 



EDUCATION AND INDUSTRY 

Without entering exhaustively into an analysis of 
the situation, five reasons may be assigned for 
this phenomenon which is by no means confined to 
the Empire State : ( i ) A large percentage of our 
city population are industrial workers who are 
small or non-taxpayers. (2) In the large cities 
are found great masses of accumulated wealth 
which can be taxed. (3) Here the home first lost 
its industrial character and its surrounding play- 
ground, and as a result much of its educational 
possibilities. (4) People are crowded closely to- 
gether in cities, evils and needs are more in evidence 
than in rural districts. Also, the opportunities for 
agitation and propaganda are more numerous. (5) 
Pauperism and juvenile crime are more prevalent 
and disturbing in cities than in the country. 

Industrial progress has brought about the sepa- 
ration of the workers into distinct, well-defined 
classes; particularly marked is the division between 
the manual workers and the brain workers or the 
managers of the business. Professor Veblen re- 
marks that the progress of industry has relieved 
one class of workers ''of the cares of business"; 
and they ''have with increasing specialization given 
their attention to the mechanical processes involved 
in the production for the market." The remarkable 
increase of the indirect method of labor is a factor 
in the modern industrial problem. The workers 
no longer produce directly to satisfy their own 
wants; each produces for others, while all furnish 
something for each individual. It is a round- 
about process; the connection between efifort and 

61 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

satisfaction is hidden. The direct reaction between 
effort and satisfaction has been superseded by a 
very complex social and industrial chain of actions 
and reactions. The worker often becomes a drudge, 
a drone, an unthmking piece of mechanism, par- 
tially because he does not recognize or feel that his 
work has any social significance, because there is 
little apparent causal relations between effort and 
wages. Industry has been "depersonalized.'* 

Modern specialization of industry, diversification 
of demands, and increase in the variety of con- 
sumption have tended to divide the population into 
a large number of classes and interests. Progress 
has always resulted from class struggles, the clash 
of interests ; but to-day the form of this contest has 
become complex. There are the familiar tradi- 
tional classes, — landowners, manufacturers, mer- 
chants, professional men, and laborers; but each 
one of these classes is now split into sub-groups on 
the one hand while, on the other, many individuals 
may be placed in two or more classes or sub-classes. 
Nevertheless many difficulties and obstructions now 
face the workman who aspires to become an em- 
ployer, who struggles to rise out of his class. John 
Mitchell believes that the workers are, as a rule, 
acting on the principal that they cannot rise out 
of that class. For the vast majority it is once a 
wage-earner, always a wage-earner. The amount 
of capital now required to set up in nearly every 
business is large. Even the farmer who runs in 
debt for his farm, finds it almost impossible, in 
many sections of this country, to pay off the 

62 



EDUCATION AND INDUSTRY 

mortgage from the profits of the farm. The amount 
of money required to enter the iron and steel busi- 
ness is measured by hundreds of thousands or mil- 
lions of dollars. Consolidation of business interests 
reduces the numbers of managers and superintend- 
ents. The great industrial concerns and the rail- 
roads are becoming large civil service systems. A 
man must enter their employ in his youth, at the 
bottom, remain with the company year after year, 
gradually working into better paid and more re- 
sponsible positions. But he always remains an 
employee. The young man can no longer work 
hard for a few years, save a few hundreds or 
thousands of dollars, and then set up in business 
as an employer of others, many of whom will fol- 
low in his footsteps within a few years. The 
person who now accumulates a small amount of 
property is obliged to turn the management of it 
over to others. Investments in stocks and bonds, 
deposits in savings banks, insurance, and like modes 
of investing property take the place of investment 
in landed property or in a business managed by the 
property owner. Management by proxy becomes 
the rule, not the exception. The corporate form 
of business requires the concentration of large 
amounts of property under the control of a chosen 
few. The savings bank, for example, is merely a 
collective form of investing in which the invest- 
ments are made by the banker rather than by the 
hundreds of small investors themselves. The dis- 
cipline that comes from the care and management 

63 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

of property is lost on the great multitude of workers 
of to-day. 

Also, coincident with this phenomenon is the 
above-mentioned change in the character of the 
multitudes of immigrants who are flocking to our 
shores. In the report of the Commissioner-Gen- 
eral of Immigration, for 1904, an official of the 
bureau who has been conducting extensive investi- 
gations in Europe, writes from there as follows : 
"The average immigrant of to-day is sadly lacking 
in that courage, intelligence, and initiative which 
characterized the European people who settled in 
the Western States during the eighties." The per- 
sonal initiative, adaptability, and self-reliance of 
the American has ever been the pride of the nation ; 
but the environment, business methods, and oppor- 
tunities which aided in the production of these 
characteristics are undergoing modification. In- 
dustry and commerce offer opportunity to only a 
few, for the development of these valuable traits; 
and immigration brings us a class of people who 
are also sadly deficient in these qualities. 

*'The machine process is a severe and insistent 
disciplinarian in point of intelligence. It requires 
close and unremitting thought, but it is thought 
which runs in standard terms of quantitative pre- 
cision. Broadly, other intelligence on the part of 
the workman is useless, or it is even worse than 
useless."^ Unfortunately under present conditions, 
the above quotation states what is true in many 
cases of subdivided labor. Extreme subdivision of 

* Veblen, Theory of Business Enterprise, p. 308. 
64 



EDUCATION AND INDUSTRY 

labor has reduced the unskilled worker to the level 
of an automatic piece of machinery. Brains, ideals, 
everything which go to make up the real human 
being and to differentiate him from the automatic 
machine are at a discount. The man becomes a 
"hand." The internal organization is now placed 
on a scientific, calculated basis. Time cards and 
exact methods of determining the cost of labor and 
material are now essential to every well-regulated 
business. Every step from the first displacement 
of the raw material until the finished product is in 
the hands of the consumer is carefully calculated. 

The chief motive for subdivision of labor is given 
by the opportunity to hire unskilled, low-standard- 
of-living workers at an extremely low wage. 
"Thus division of labor is, in the last analysis, 
nothing but one of those processes of adaptation 
that play so great a part in the evolutionary history 
of the whole inhabited world : adaptation of the 
tasks of labor to the variety of human powers, 
adaptation of individuals to the tasks to be per- 
formed, continued differentiation of the one and of 
the other."^ But, if this differentiation is carried 
so far as to tie the individuals down to such a nar- 
row routine as to prevent their rising in the scale 
of life, it is a bar to human progress. The immi- 
grant is one of the causes of subdivision of labor. 
Where labor unions are strong enough to establish 
a minimum wage, some modifications may be looked 
for ; but the question which society must face is : 
Can society afford to allow certain of its members 

^ Eiicher, Industrial Evolution, p. 299. 
5 65 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

to be reduced to the condition of human automa- 
tons? If it is held that certain classes in the 
community cannot be improved or raised to a 
higher level, then indeeJ the caste form of society 
is treading close upon the heels of the American 
people. 

Division of labor, perhaps even minute sub- 
division of labor, may be considered to be a per- 
manent factor in industry. Modern industry is 
more productive, many times more productive per 
v^orker, than the older, more simple forms; and as 
a result a shorter working day is allowed the 
worker. This grinding, unvarying, monotonous, 
joyless sort of working period should be balanced 
by broader social life, by better, more elevating use 
of leisure time. In short, as one's work becomes 
exact and narrowing, one's leisure time should 
bring variety and breadth of experience. The suf- 
frage has been extended to practically all the male 
population over twenty-one years of age; but in 
order to exercise the franchise intelligently, as it was 
recognized in the days of Plato and Aristotle, the 
citizen must have leisure time to study and discuss 
the social and political problems of the day. If 
this leisure time is not properly or wisely utilized, 
the ''boss" and the "machine" flourish. The great 
multiplicity of clashing interests also offers oppor- 
tunity for the shrewd and unscrupulous politician 
to play interest against interest, and to win political 
control and personal gain through careful manipu- 
lation. In any industrial democracy the problem 

66 



EDUCATION AND INDUSTRY 

of the utilization of leisure becomes one of the im- 
portant and vital problems. 

Looking again at education from a purely eco- 
nomic point of view, aside from ethical considera- 
tions, the aim, let it be repeated, should be to 
develop not only more efficient producers, but also 
more efficient consumers. All men must be con- 
sidered from the side of consumption as well as of 
production. The end and aim of normal economic 
activity is consumption of economic goods. Other 
things being equal, consumption should be directed 
toward those articles which the country is best 
adapted to produce ; it should also be directed away 
from the excessive demand for the raw and crude 
economic goods, toward a greater variety in quan- 
tity and quality of demands. As Clark has shown, 
the tendency of dynamic economics, as seen from 
the purely economic point of view, is toward variety 
in consumption and specialization in production. 
But after a certain point is passed specialization in 
production tends to prevent greater variety in con- 
sumption. These economic considerations, as well 
as those of an ethical or social nature, set bounds 
beyond which specialization ought not to pass. 
This limit is not fixed and invariable. For exam- 
ple, the man who has an avocation, who utilizes his 
leisure in such a way as to broaden his view of life, 
so as to exercise many different sets of muscles and 
brain cells, may specialize his work much more 
minutely without individual detriment or economic 
and social loss, than the man who talks shop, or 
does nothing to diversify his tastes or to open up 

67 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

new lines of thought and action during his leisure 
hours. In the terms employed by the economist, 
the ideal point of equilibrium is where the descend- 
ing curve of the social value of the products due to 
additional subdivision is met by the ascending curve 
of disutility due to long-continued and narrow 
specialization on the part of the individual members 
of society. Other things remaining the same, the 
additional products which come into being through 
increasing subdivision, gradually diminish in value 
as increment after increment is added, according to 
the well-known law of diminishing utility; and on 
the contrary the detriment to society as a whole 
increases as individuals are forced into narrower 
and narrower rounds of duty. 

Ethical considerations lead directly and unequivo- 
cally to the conviction that men must not be treated 
as machines, that the true end and aim of industry 
is the production of men, not the multiplication of 
profits. True long-run economic aims coincide 
with ethical ideals. As Walt Whitman has taught 
us : ''Produce great men, the rest follows." Primi- 
tive industry was always a means to an end which 
was plainly seen ; it was never an end in itself. It 
has remained for modern times to heap up com- 
plexity, confusion, and cross-purposes until the 
fundamentals have been hidden from view. When 
the methods of modern complex industry come into 
collision with the true economic and ethical de- 
mands of society, the former must be modified. It 
is one of the functions of education to harmonize 
the demands of these two apparently conflicting 

68 



EDUCATION AND INDUSTRY 

and opposing forces. It should so train the mem- 
bers of society as to allow the greatest possible 
advantage to be taken of efficient productive 
methods consistent with the welfare and best de- 
velopment of the individual members of society of 
all classes and conditions. 

Both the internal and external organization of 
industry now tend to remove variety, irregularity, 
risk, chance, and speculation. The business of the 
future calls for the manager and the administrator 
rather than the speculator or the promotor, for the 
steady, routinized, narrowly specialized worker 
rather than all-round men so familiar in the early 
industrial history of the United States. The traits 
of the pioneer, the backwoodsman, and the hunter, 
those traits due to varied and changing experiences 
of the early settler, continue, however, and are 
transmitted from generation to generation long 
after the stimuli which produced them has ceased 
to act and has been overwhelmed by the rising tide 
of civilization. If modern life offers inadequate 
opportunity in the ordinary course of daily life for 
the expression of these inherited impulses, if they 
are inhibited from all beneficial or desirable ex- 
pression, they will find expression in abnormal or 
undesirable ways. Gambling, sport of all kinds, 
drinking, carousing, are some of the many forms 
in which these inhibited traits find a vent. The 
assimilation of the recent immigration will dilute 
and diminish the strength of these characteristics ; 
but they should not be smothered and cast aside, 

69 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

they should be utilized and turned into new and 
modern channels of activity. 

Mr. John A. Hobson in a recent article touches 
upon this point. 'The factory employee, the shop 
assistant, the office clerk, the most typical member 
of modern industrial society, finds an oppressive 
burden of uninteresting order, of mechanism, in 
their working day. Their work affords no con- 
siderable scope for spontaneity, self-expression and 
the interest, achievement and surprise which are 
ordinary human qualities. It is easily admitted 
that an absolutely ordered (however well ordered) 
human life would be vacant of interest and intol- 
erable; in other words it is a prime condition of 
humanity that the unexpected in the form of hap- 
pening and achievement should be represented in 
every life. Art in its widest sense, as interested 
effort of production, and play as interested but 
unproductive effort, are essential."^ If modern 
industrial and commercial life is being placed upon 
a stable, sure, scientific, calculable basis, if chance 
and luck are being replaced by skill and efficiency, 
if routine and dead uniformity are replacing all- 
round effort and variety, if the home environment 
is becoming more monotonous and artificial, other 
social institutions must furnish pleasurable change 
and variety. If elevating institutions such as the 
school or the church do not cope satisfactorily with 
the situation, other much less desirable ones will, 
and the spirit of gambling, of riotous living, of 
carousal, of living for the sake of sport, will enter 

^International Journal of Ethics, January, 1905. 
70 



EDUCATION AND INDUSTRY 

society and take a firm hold. Old instincts are not 
easily eradicated; education must never overlook 
them. The recent additions and contemplated ad- 
ditions to our educational system are the concrete 
results of some of the attempts which have been 
made to cope with the question in a more or less 
intelligent manner. 

The entrance of the United States and other 
important industrial nations upon a policy of com- 
mercial expansion, the growth of imperialism, and 
the prevalence of the desire to exploit the less in- 
dustrially progressive nations, mark the beginning 
of a new epoch in our national life. Specialization 
of industry and subdivision of labor now assume 
new aspects. Capital becomes international, while 
labor still remains upon a national basis. Mr. 
Hobson and others have pointed out that the back- 
ward nations will now assume the place hitherto 
occupied by the great mass of the unskilled in the 
home country. Humanitarian and democratic 
tendencies are in danger of receiving a check. 
Capital in a new, rapidly developing country finds 
opportunity for investments in improvements; but 
in a more highly developed, but still progressive 
country, it is obliged, unless there are opportunities 
for investments in foreign countries, to seek in- 
vestment in directly productive enterprises which 
produce articles for the consumption of the great 
mass of the people. If there is no opportunity for 
foreign investment of capital, industrial progress 
will necessitate an improvement in the consumptive 
power of the masses. Economic and ethical aims 

71 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

begin to draw into closer relationship. The pos- 
sibility of enormous investments of capital in South 
America and Asia is something which threatens to 
affect the industrial, social and educational welfare 
of the American people. ''Once encompass China 
with a network of railroads and steamer services, 
the size of the labor market to be tapped is so 
stupendous that it might well absorb in its develop- 
ment all the spare capital and business energy the 
advanced European nations and the United States 
can supply for generations."^ China and the 
Chinese workers are a danger because of the low 
standards of living which prevail in the Asiatic 
nation, and the consequent ease with which the 
Chinese people may be exploited. If increased 
manufacturing and commercial activity in China is 
not accompanied by a corresponding increase in the 
standard of living, the American farmer and the 
American workman are doubtless imperiled by 
the situation. The educational movement of the last 
two or three decades is essentially a working class 
movement, and its future is bound up in the wel- 
fare of the industrial and agricultural classes. 
^ Hobson, Imperialism, p, 334, 



72 



CHAPTER IV 

NEW AIMS. IDEALS AND METHODS IN 
EDUCATION 

The many recent modifications in home, indus- 
trial and social life inevitably lead society toward 
new social, educational and moral ideals. During 
the last century industrial and scientific progress 
outran all other forms of development. A problem 
of to-day is to bring our educational, legal, eco- 
nomic and social values and ideals into harmonious 
relations with the present industrial situation. 
There is a continual conflict between the ideals and 
customs established under conditions existing in 
preceding generations, and newer ones called into 
being by changing economic and social conditions. 
The aims and ideals which were presented to the 
schoolboy and the schoolgirl of a generation ago 
are not as appropriate and fitting now as then. 
Society needs time to adjust itself to the kaleido- 
scopic changes of the last quarter of a century. 
Time is, indeed, required to remodel and to recon- 
struct our educational system upon a new basis; 
in order to perform this task intelligently, efficiently, 
and with the least possible friction, consideration 
should be given to the aims and ideals which educa- 
tion ought to present to the students of to-day. 

73 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

The haphazard, patched-up condition of our school 
curriculum is the result of a conflict between the 
traditional and the practical ideals in education. 
The former overlooks almost completely the dy- 
namic view of the world ; its eyes are turned back- 
ward toward the past. It magnifies the desirability 
of disciplinary and purely cultural studies; and on 
the other hand it minimizes the value of, and often 
sneers at, the practical and the concrete. An ex- 
treme example of this spirit is presented in the 
familiar story of the old college professor of higher 
mathematics, who chose that subject for his spec- 
iality because, he believed, no practical use could 
ever be made of it. On the contrary, the partizans 
of the practical studies are prone to forget the les- 
sons of the past, and to see only the immediate 
monetary value of the training which they advocate. 
The clamor and confusion arising from the conten- 
tions of these two opposing factions have prevented 
or retarded the general acceptance of certain aims, 
methods and ideals which are of fundamental im- 
portance at the present time. 

The American public-school system — the word 
"system" reveals one of the crying evils in educa- 
tional work and philosophy. Everything is sys- 
tematized, *'routinized," standardized, averaged. 
All the children of the nation are crowded, pushed 
or pulled through similar courses of study at as 
nearly uniform speed as possiblcy — a common mold 
is used for each and for all. The teachers are 
obliged to teach according to a minutely prescribed 
system — ten minutes for this and fifteen for that — 

74 



IDEALS AND METHODS 

this subject must be presented in a certain manner 
at a scheduled hour, and that by another method at 
another hour. Logical, methodical development of 
the subject is made a fetish. No matter whether 
the child is well or ill, over or under-worked, 
naturally quick or slow of comprehension, or 
whether he is or is not aided at home by the parents ; 
the system operates like clockwork in the vain 
attempt to produce a fictitious, although much talked 
about, average child. Stern financial necessity is 
the father of much of the routine, overcrowding 
and system found in the public schools; but on the 
other hand it is, in no small measure, due to the 
worship of a methodical ''business" administration 
which turns out fine, accurate and minutely detailed 
reports at the expense of the spontaneity, originality, 
individuality and health of both teachers and pupils. 
This demand for uniformity or standardization may 
be partially attributed to the potent influence of our 
mechanical and industrial processes. Every ma- 
chine-made article must be interchangeable with 
companion articles; it must not appreciably deviate 
from a standard. This is what Veblen calls the 
"machine process." If industrial life has been re- 
duced to a rigid unvarying system, the school ought 
so to conduct its work as to impart variety and non- 
uniformity. If the former tends to produce uni- 
form types of workers, the latter must foster 
individuality, and develop individual traits and 
characteristics. The school must save the race from 
the monotony and dead uniformity with which it is 

76 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

threatened by modern industrialism with its stand- 
ardization and mechanical repetition. 

For many years the school has been gradually 
increasing its importance as a factor in molding the 
life and ideals of the young. The family — the 
home life — has hitherto furnished the best field for 
individual instruction, for the development of 
originality and self-reliance. At the time when 
the home influence is tending to weaken owing to 
new social and industrial conditions, the school is, 
on the other hand, in danger of becoming a mere 
educational factory. Mass — factory — instruction in- 
clines toward uniformity, lack of originality, and 
absence of personal initiative on the part of those 
thus instructed. Three stages of educational de- 
velopment may be discerned; domestic, when prac- 
tically all instruction was given in the home by the 
parents or masters ; the handicraft stage, represented 
by itinerant teachers or the old district-school sys- 
tem when education was confined to a narrow 
formal curriculum ; and the factory stage, best 
represented by the graded schools of a large city. 
But as the students are dissimilar units and must 
fill dissimilar roles in the economy of the world, 
artistic, rather than interchangeable, products should 
constitute the true output of the school. The school 
should become a studio, rather than a factory; the 
fourth stage will be the arts and crafts stage of 
educational development. Two great obstacles 
now confront us : lack of money and of well-trained 
teachers. 

;6 



IDEALS AND METHODS 

It is a physiological and psychological axiom that 
men are not created equal, they differ widely in 
strength, endurance, adaptability for certain kinds 
of occupation, and in various other ways. If no 
two trees of the forest, or no two flowers of the 
garden, are exactly identical, surely the variations 
between members of that infinitely more complex 
organism, human society, must be considerable and 
important ! One race of people differs widely from 
another in their physical, mental, and moral charac- 
teristics. The kind of education which is best for 
one people is not necessarily good for another. 
Differences and variations between members of the 
same race or family appear early in childhood, and 
environment tends to accentuate and increase these 
variations. There is no absolutely fixed, unchange- 
able standard of educational values which the 
schoolmaster can apply at all times and under all 
circumstances. The educational equation contains 
many unknown and independently varying factors. 
The school must accept graciously the existence of 
these manifold differentiations. It ought to recog- 
nize that the education which is eflicient and appro- 
priate for one individual is often extremely wasteful 
when applied to another, particularly in the higher 
grades of the public schools and in the college or 
university. And moreover, different subjects and 
methods may find appropriate periods in the life 
of a child when they may be most profitably pre- 
sented and employed, when the work of instruction 
may proceed along the line of least resistance. It 
is not wise and not proper to shirk this difficult 

17 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

problem by resorting to a purely imaginary char- 
acter, — the average child — although the latter 
course may be much easier and may prevent undue 
increase in educational expenditures. It is the duty 
and function of education to bring to efficiency the 
desirable traits and powers with which each child 
is endowed. ''Desirable" is not a fixed concept, but 
is modified by time, place and stage of civilization. 
''Another fact which sentimental philanthropy 
habitually ignores, is the co-existence of types in 
the moral world. This is a fact parallel to that 
coexistence of organic types which biology makes 
clear to us. Though higher and higher forms have 
successively taken precedence in the struggle of 
evolution, this rarely means the complete disap- 
pearance of earlier types. Thus, on the earth to- 
day are examples of the most typical forms of 
organic life, from the unicellular protozoan to the 
highest mammals. Similarly in the moral world, 
any great city presents a co-existence of moral 
types from savagery to civilization."^ Our school 
authorities also ignore this "fact." The school also 
deals with many types of moral nature. While 
progress — evolution — has evolved high moral na- 
tures, not all have been raised to these high levels ; 
many are still living upon a lower level, — a level 
corresponding to that of generations now long past. 
In addition to the various physical and intellectual 
traits of school children, a great variety of moral 
types also complicates the situation. The ideals 
and subjects which appeal to one child may leave 

* Griggs, The New Humanism, p. i8i. 
78 



IDEALS AND METHODS 

his neighbor absolutely unmoved. As each par- 
ticular soil is best adapted to some particular agri- 
cultural crop, so is each particular young mind best 
adjusted to some special form of training and kind 
of work. Furthermore, barren soils by proper 
treatment become fertile; in like manner will the 
dull, unprogressive, or apparently incorrigible child 
blossom and develop into an efficient and worthy 
adult if he is given proper treatment and proper 
mental and bodily nourishment. But individual, 
not mass, treatment is necessary. Economic and 
social considerations urge the study of these facts. 
The class system ought to be modified so as to do 
away with its most objectionable features. 

Society is an organism in which each individual 
has his appropriate sphere of action. Progress is 
fast or slow in the proportion in which each in- 
dividual is enabled to fit himself for, and to perform 
his appropriate function. Education should be an 
organized attempt to put the right man in the right 
place. Many other institutions, manners, customs, 
traditions, laws and prejudices oppose such efforts, 
but educational endeavors should be steadily and 
everlastingly directed toward this goal. Each in- 
dividual should strive to play well his part in the 
great realistic drama of life; he should not be 
tempted to play a part which belongs to others. A 
prominent feature of the work in the school of the 
future, although it is almost entirely neglected at 
the present writing, is to be the direction of the 
student toward his proper work and place in life, 
toward the niche for which he is best adapted. Not 

79 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

to make professional men and students of all; but 
to direct toward, and to fit each student for the 
work and position in life for which he is best 
suited, is indeed the ideal end and aim of education. 
The attainment of such a Utopian ideal need not, 
of course, be expected under the present social and 
industrial environment, only approximation is an- 
ticipated. The student has been compared to a bit 
of raw material, and the teacher to the mechanic 
whose duty it is to be instrumental in adapting this 
raw material to its appropriate form of service and 
in fashioning it into proper shape. Each bit of 
human material which comes into the teacher's hand 
is unlike any other bit; no two are identical, each 
requires special treatment. Each pupil should be 
directed and fashioned so as to nicely and properly 
fit the groove in which his life should run. The 
rules and regulations which have produced rigidity 
and inelasticity in our educational system ought to 
be modified with a view of adapting instruction to 
the child's requirements and peculiar demands. It 
is not conceived that a committee shall examine the 
student, and thereupon artificially and authori- 
tatively decide upon the particular course or occu- 
pation for which the child is best adapted. And it 
certainly is not advocated that the school should be 
used to deepen or to continue class demarkation, 
or to uphold the creed that the son of a working 
man should, as a matter of course, be a manual 
laborer, and the child of a financier, a banker. The 
true conception is that the school should bring 
to the surface the latent possibilities of each and 

80 



IDEALS AND METHODS 

every child. One function of the school is con- 
ceived to be that of breaking down artificial in- 
dividual inequalities, and replacing them by natural 
individual differentiations. 

The modern ideal of a school is not that of a 
mere place where students congregate to Hsten, to 
study, and to be repressed. It is rather that of a 
hive of activity, a place where practical and personal 
experience is broadened and made intelligible. 
Each child brings to the school certain valuable 
threads of experience which ought to be utilized 
when possible. If education aims to fit all for the 
so-called ''genteel" occupations or professions, these 
will of necessity become over-crowded, misery and 
discontent will be increased rather than be dimin- 
ished, and universal compulsory education will 
prove to be a curse, not a blessing, to a vast num- 
ber of its recipients. Mr. Mallock has written: 
"In other words, the only true equality of educa- 
tional opportunity is an equal opportunity for each, 
not of acquiring the same knowledge, but of ac- 
quiring the knowledge and of developing the 
faculties which, given his circumstances and given 
his natural capacities, will do most to make him a 
useful, a contented, and a happy man." Psychology 
assists the educator in discovering the proper ma- 
terials to be given and the appropriate periods when 
these materials should be presented, as well as the 
correct methods of obtaining attention, arousing 
interest, and forming good habits of thought and 
action. When the proper material and the correct 
order of presentation are approximated, waste in 
6 8i 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

education will be reduced to a minimum. But it 
must never be forgotten that the teacher always 
deals with special cases. Sociology, on the other 
hand, teaches that it is the duty of each person to 
follow the occupation which psychology points out 
for him ; only in this way may the highest possible 
development be achieved both individually and col- 
lectively. Judged from an economic standpoint, 
society should prepare men in proper numbers, 
according to the requirements of the different 
occupations, and further productive energies ought 
to be so adjusted as to produce the correct amount 
of each different kind of goods, with a view of 
preventing a surplus or a scarcity of men in any 
trade, or an over or under-production of any class 
or kind of goods. 

"Each mind," writes Emerson, "has its own 
method. A true man never acquires after college 
rules. What you have aggregated in a natural 
manner surprises and delights when it is produced." 
Dislike of school work is only the external symptom 
of a partially concealed cause. Repression, the en- 
deavor to teach along lines which are not those of 
natural development, the use of second-hand knowl- 
edge where first-hand might be utilized, bear the 
bitter, though natural, fruits of dislike of school 
and its tasks, and destroy the desire for knowledge 
and intellectual growth and development. Prema- 
ture attempts to force the book, grammar, literature, 
spelling, writing, upon the unprepared and unwill- 
ing child, act as a damper upon originality and 
spontaneity. Many pass through the ordeal, but 

82 



IDEALS AND METHODS 

multitudes fall by the wayside. How many care 
for books or study who leave school before grad- 
uating from the high school? More drawing 
and painting, more work with plastic materials, 
more shop and laboratory work, more contact with 
nature, and less memory drill and text-book study, 
are needed. Experience makes smooth the path 
which leads toward knowledge. Dry, unthinking 
repetition of texts, or study of subjects utterly 
foreign to the child's experience, is almost valueless. 
A book ought not to be used until a need is felt for 
it. Think of the mockery, the uselessness, the utter 
folly of teaching grammar, for example, in the 
fourth grade, to children who are scarcely able to 
comprehend the simplest of abstract terms ! Ex- 
pression cannot be taught through mere impression. 
We learn to write by writing, to work by working, 
and to talk by talking. Hubbard, of Roycroft 
Shop, has caught the educational ideal of the future 
as have few others. "In the future our children 
shall go to school — not be sent or sentenced. Noth- 
ing is of any value except what you work for. 
Things given you and thrust upon you are forever 
alien to you — separate and apart, and will be 
moulted very shortly." The world is full of men 
who are, on account of misdirected ambition, at 
cross-purposes with their real work in life. Some 
men naturally find expression by means of words — 
writing or speaking; others by means of construc- 
tive work — sculpture, painting, architecture, busi- 
ness, engineering, commanding men. The school 
has heretofore laid too much emphasis upon the 

83 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

former ; it has faithfully, almost fanatically, tried to 
make all find expression in that way, and has not 
provided adequate opportunity for the latter sort 
of expression. 

In the city, for examole, man, not nature, forms 
the chief item of interest in the environment. The 
city child's experience is with human beings rather 
than with natural objects. Stories of forests, caves, 
rivers, or mountains find no awakening response in 
the mind and heart of the child of the city whose 
life is bounded by brick walls and stony pavements. 
He is easily interested, however, in his city, in its 
streets, geography, buildings, parks and markets, 
in the methods of procuring and distributing its 
food and water supply, in the lighting of its streets 
and homes. He will be eager to learn about the 
occupations of its inhabitants, of its railroads and 
its street-car lines, of its government, — policemen, 
firemen, council, mayor, elections, etc., — of its 
schools, libraries and art galleries. Interest excited 
by such means will give the teacher many oppor- 
tunities to lead the child toward broader, more gen- 
eral and more imaginative subjects. 

The prejudice against manual labor is deep- 
seated, and the result of the influence of many 
centuries. It comes down to us from the days of 
Aristotle, from the time of slavery and of serfdom, 
from the age of chivalry and of warrior barons. 
Yet, it seems strangely out of place in these days of 
universal suffrage and of democracy and in a repub- 
lic founded to give equal rights to every man and 
special privileges to none. To live in idleness and 

84 



IDEALS AND METHODS 

luxury upon the fruits of the labors of others was, 
in past centuries, to hve a life of honor and dis-* 
tinction ; and this ancient and now false dogma has 
filtered down through the long course of years into 
our life in the latter part of the nineteenth and 
the first portion of the twentieth centuries. The 
most distasteful part of many kinds of manual toil 
arise not from the work itself, but from the treat- 
ment accorded the toiler by his fellowmen. To be 
lowered in the estimation of one's fellows as a 
result of the calloused and grimy hand is often the 
real degradation and the distaste for his trade which 
is felt by the manual worker. 

This prejudice is real and is supported by ven- 
erable authority. Burke has written that "the 
occupation of a hair-dresser, or of a working 
tallow-chandler cannot be a matter of honor to any 
person," — and Higher Authority also informs us that 
*'the wisdom of a learned man cometh by oppor- 
tunity of leisure; and he that hath little business 
shall become wise. How can he get wisdom that 
holdeth the plough, and that glorieth in the goad; 
that driveth oxen and is occupied in their labors, 
and whose talk is of bullocks?" Education instead 
of aiming to uproot and destroy this feeling seems 
rather to tend to continue it. Here the finger 
touches one of the weakest spots in our public- 
school system. In the public school, children of all 
social classes are brought into intimate relations 
upon a nearly equal basis. It should emphasize the 
social value of all kinds of work. It ought to pro- 
claim in no uncertain tones that the man who does 

85 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

his best, who makes the largest contribution to the 
welfare and happiness of society, in view of his 
personal and environmental conditions, is worthy 
of the highest praise. The educational system of 
this country, as a whole, still has the conscious aim 
and purpose of training each child for mental or 
clerical work. *'Not until the term artisan has 
come to be as honorable as the term artist," says 
Bliss Carmen, ''will we have real freedom." 

Can a modern industrial democratic nation grow 
so powerful that it can overlook the common ele- 
mental necessities of man, — food, clothing and 
shelter? Will not our entire educational and in- 
dustrial system become top-heavy and rotten at the 
core, if we neglect the proper education and train- 
ing of that great mass of future citizens who are to 
be voters as well as toilers in the store, shop, and 
on the farm? A modern industrial nation cannot 
continue to progress unless the manual workers are 
efficient and well cared for; and a modern demo- 
cratic nation cannot hope to be progressive unless 
the great body of its citizens are intelligent. All 
cannot be lawyers, politicians, doctors, captains of 
industry, bankers, clerks, agents, and the like; yet, 
there is to-day a surplus of this class of people. 
Increased cost of living and scarcity of efficient 
workers in the face of great improvements in the 
methods of production indicate that there is an 
over-supply of indirectly productive workers and of 
non-producers. Our schools have not compre- 
hended their responsibility for this situation. 

86 



IDEALS AND METHODS 

The Austrian sociologist, Gumplowicz, observes 
that "fortune hunting, an idea that the peasant 
never knows and seldom incites the nobleman, is 
the great object which attracts the middle class." 
This quotation affords an explanation of the great 
predominance of wealth-seeking in the United 
States, of the emphasis which is laid upon the 
accumulation of great wealth. We have been, and 
are, a nation of middle-class people, ideals of trade, 
commerce and business profits appealed to all in the 
past; but recent industrial progress has narrowed 
the opportunities to pass from the position of an 
employee to that of doing business for "one's self." 
Hard and fast lines of demarkation between the 
employed and the employer classes are becoming 
clearly defined and hard to overlook. The conflict 
is now on between two diverse sets of ideals, — the 
business man's and that of the wage-earner, — 
although older ideals still survive which are almost 
wholly unfitted to modern life. 

Many of these time-worn and traditional ideals are 
still held up before the child in the public schools ; 
these were adapted to a local environment, and 
considered only the needs of the so-called upper 
and middle classes. Men like Pestalozzi, Froebel, and 
Herbert Spencer foreshadowed coming events and 
insisted upon other educational aims and ideals. 
The Grecian, the Roman, and the medieval ideals 
were all adjusted to small localized, non-industrial 
communities, resting upon the basis of slavery or 
serfdom. Still held under the spell of these now 
outgrown ideals, the child is taught to emulate the 

87 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

warrior, the man of leisure, the statesman, the cap- 
tain of industry, totally unmindful of the obvious 
fact that only a small, decreasing percentage can 
reach such positions. We are everlastingly pro- 
claiming and boasting that there is room at the top ; 
but we are apparently little concerned with the wel- 
fare of that great mass of humanity which must, 
of necessity, occupy what are commonly called the 
lower rungs of the ladder. Our educational efforts 
are chiefly devoted to preparation for a few posi- 
tions ; our educational system is, if we except some 
recent hopeful tendencies, crowding all toward these 
as a goal. Yet, society is much like a pyramid ; its 
stability depends upon the nature of its base rather 
than upon that of its apex. A world environment, 
world markets, vmiversal education, the uplift of 
the working classes, make obsolete old ideals, 
customs and manners. Let us hold up before the 
eyes of the young men and women of to-day, new 
twentieth century ideals : — the inventor, the engi- 
neer, the chemist, the wise physician, the scientific 
farmer, the skilled mechanic, the woman who un- 
derstands the economics of the household, the 
worker, mental or manual, who excels in his line of 
work, whether that work be the direction of the 
affairs of a nation, of a farm, or of a household. 
Forever past is that epoch in the world's history 
when warriors and kings appear to be the sole 
makers of history. To-day work, not idleness, is 
demanded. Production, not destruction, utilization, 
not waste, are demanded of men. We must teach 

88 



IDEALS AND METHODS 

that it is braver, better, and more useful to live 
nobly than to die heroically. 

In support of this contention the following quota- 
tion from an article written by a well-known social 
settlement worker and philanthropist, Mr. J. G. P. 
Stokes, is worthy of attention: "Until recently 
it appears to have escaped public notice that this 
constant emphasis [given by the school] upon the 
importance of personal success, unless safeguarded 
by suitable ethical training, tends subtly to the de- 
velopment of selfish propensities, that lead the 
individual to disregard or subordinate the interests 
of others, in the furtherance of personal ends, and 
that lead to unsocial attitudes, and to unfriendly 
rivalries and ill-feeling, and to wrong doings of 
every sort. The constant encouragement given to 
personal ambition for personal triumph and per- 
sonal reward tends to develop a desire similar to 
that possessed by the criminal offender, who, in 
seeking his personal gratification, gives no proper 
regard or consideration to the relation of his acts 
or of his course to the welfare of others or to the 
welfare of the community." The grasping monopo- 
list is but one remove from the robber baron of the 
Middle Ages. Just as the latter, after he had 
served his purpose, was finally forced by organized 
society to cease his depredations, so must the former 
be shorn of his power to divert social income into 
private pockets, to levy toll upon the public. The 
school — a democratic institution — ought to accel- 
erate, not retard, this process. Let the lure of per- 
sonal success which causes one to ride rough-shod 

89 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

over one's fellows and which introduces the crude 
ethics of the struggle known as the survival of the 
fittest, be no longer held out by our teachers. In 
the school, at least, we may hope higher and nobler 
ideals will find a resting place. These words of 
President Roosevelt form a fitting motto to be hung 
on the wall in every schoolroom of the land, "To 
each man there comes normally the chance so to 
lead his life that at the end of his days his children, 
his wife, those that are dear to him, shall rise up 
and call him blessed, and so that his neighbors and 
those who have been brought into intimate asso- 
ciation may feel that he has done his part as a man 
in the world which sadly needs that each man 
should play his part well." 

The city boy or girl has little or no useful work 
to do. This constitutes one of the serious menaces 
and dangers of city life, and furnishes an explana- 
tion of the marked superiority of the country boy 
over the city youth of past generations. Socrates 
taught that to deprive a child of the opportunity to 
perform useful services was to deprive him of much 
needed experience in life. President Eliot believes 
that "enabling the children to make something, or 
do something, which is acceptable to other people 
ought to be a leading object at every school." The 
early years of one's life should be a preparation 
for useful work in after years. Work is the natural 
occupation of each and every individual. Service, 
not wealth, should be the end and aim of human 
activities ; the present interdependence of individ- 
uals and the complexity of modern industry teaches 

90 



IDEALS AND METHODS 

this lesson. Varied industry is best for all, but 
modern life is drifting toward extreme specializa- 
tion. Pure mental labor or pure manual labor nar- 
rows and stunts the growth of the individual. 
This man may be best adapted to perform mental 
work; but if he never uses his hands, muscles, and 
eyes in hard or skilled manual work, a vast field of 
experience remains forever as a sealed book to him ; 
the laborer cut off from all opportunity for mental 
growth and enjoyment is placed close to the level 
of the animal, or of the machine. In order to in- 
sure well-rounded development, mental and manual 
work should fall to the lot of every man and 
woman, irrespective of all artificial class distinc- 
tions. Manual training and domestic science have 
been introduced into the curriculum of the public 
schools as the result of an attempt to remedy the 
lack of opportunity for useful manual work in the 
life of the majority of our city school children. At 
present this work is not entirely satisfactory. The 
problems given are necessarily artificial, and do not 
savor sufficiently of the actual practical work and 
conditions outside the schoolroom. Occasionally 
this obstacle is partially surmounted and the boy 
may, at irregular intervals, make some useful arti- 
cles for the home, or the girl prepare a meal for 
guests at the school. 

The monastic ideal of education is now obsolete; 
education should be an integral part of life. In 
order to better prepare for future usefulness of the 
students, school work and practical work should be 
drawn closer together. Coordination of theory 

91 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

and practice, both as to time and place, is desirable. 
The customary wide separation of the two is the 
cause of serious waste of human energy. Both 
industry and the students are injured by the isola- 
tion of the high school, the college and the uni- 
versity from the practical affairs of the industrial 
and commercial world; but improvement in this 
direction is noticeable, particularly in many of our 
state universities. The professors are taking an 
active interest in the industrial, political, technical 
and scientific progress of the world, and the stu- 
dents are being taught to consider the present as 
well as the past. When the practical side of edu- 
cation is considered, however, the average teacher 
of to-day is found to be an obstacle. As Professor 
De Garmo, of Cornell University, once said in a 
lecture, ''The teaching profession is filled with 
uneconomic women and quiet-loving men." An- 
other lecturer was so impressed by this condition 
that he asserted, ''All teachers should work a por- 
tion of the time, in order that they may come into 
actual contact with the industrial and economic life 
and problems of to-day." These may be extreme 
views, but they point out a real evil in regard to the 
teachers in our public schools, and in many colleges 
and universities, — an evil which is plainly seen by 
our workingmen. Undoubtedly, "that which is 
treated with respect in school, whether it be arith- 
metic or grammar, cotton picking or hog raising, 
religion or politics, will rarely be an object of con- 
tempt after school." 

92 



IDEALS AND METHODS 

Although cultural studies ought not to be omitted 
or neglected, after all, preparation for earning a 
livelihood is an extremely important duty. Educa- 
tion should impart power to do and ability to ac- 
complish. The world needs the doer and the 
thinker united in one individual. Do our high 
schools, colleges, or universities emphasize suffi- 
ciently this practical side of school training? Se- 
clusion and quiet do not impart the power to do, 
and uneconomical and parasitic conditions do not 
aid in producing future breadwinners. The high 
school and the college are open to the young men 
and women who have leisure, whose parents are 
financially able to support them through a long 
period of dependence, but entrance through their 
portals is extremely difficult for young workers. 
Many of the most desirable and capable students 
are obliged to leave school at an early age on ac- 
count of financial circumstances. Their parents 
are unable to keep them in school ; they must earn 
their own bread and butter. Our public-school 
system should stand ready to assist this class of 
young people. Universal public education is a 
delusion if the children of the less financially able 
are not allowed to receive its benefits because school 
and business hours conflict. Night-school work, 
half-day work, or some arrangement between shop, 
office or store on the one hand, and the school on 
the other, should be tried. No class of students 
can excel a wide-awake, energetic class of bread- 
winners, and, it may be added, the best kind of a 
worker is also a student. The student and the 

93 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

worker combined simultaneously in one individual 
is excellent. Work during vacation is good, but 
work during the school term is better. Contact 
with the material and practical things of the world 
makes one a better student. Hard and fast cur- 
ricula must bend to the wind of modern necessity ; 
the public school must open its doors to the young 
workers. 

To be thrown upon one's own resources is rarely 
an evil, and is usually a benefit. Many high-school 
and college boys would be gainers in the end if 
their allowances and remittances were reduced to a 
minimum. It is undoubtedly true that the youth 
of to-day requires a longer probationary period than 
the child of more primitive people, but it is also 
true that the best and most logical way to prepare 
a student for service in the great world of affairs 
is not that of keeping him a dependent and non- 
producer up to the very day when he is launched 
upon the unknown sea of business or professional 
life. A life of economic dependence, and isolation 
from the business and industrial world, have proven 
stumbling blocks in the career of many promising 
young men. 

The world is one vast moving panorama. New 
scenes, new conditions, new kinds of people, are 
constantly coming into view. Industrial, economic, 
educational and moral forms and problems are 
subject to constant modification. Everything is 
dynamic, nothing is static. The ideals and needs 
of to-day differ from those of yesterday, and those 
of to-day may not be desirable to-morrow. Edu- 

94 



IDEALS AND METHODS 

cation should aim to keep abreast of this great, 
throbbing, changeable world current, but the in- 
dustrial development and social changes have been 
so rapid during the recent decades that educational 
development has, of necessity, lagged far behind. 
The ideals evolved during a century of great 
material progress and of rapid exploitation of na- 
tural resources, are not adapted to a century in 
which distribution, not production, of wealth fur- 
nishes the most vital problems. Therefore, only 
through the introduction of new aims, ideals and 
methods into the theory and practice of education 
can the school become an efficient tool, working for 
social and economic progress in the present era. 



95 



CHAPTER V 

WOMAN AND INDUSTRY 

In considering the education of the girl, the edu- 
cator and the economist are brought face to face 
with a condition which is both unique and perplex- 
ing; old theories and traditions of woman's work, 
education and sphere of influence do not square 
with the necessities and limitations of to-day. 
Nevertheless, these inherited prejudices and tradi- 
tions are particularly deep-seated and abiding; 
although changed home environment and the altered 
functions of the home call for a modified view as 
to the position of women. As a necessary prelim- 
inary to the consideration of the education of 
women, a survey must be made of the effect which 
modern industrial progress has produced upon the 
social and industrial functions of women. The 
decline of domestic or household industry and the 
rise of the factory system have greatly modified 
the internal organization of the home. Recent 
industrial transformations have altered the relations 
between husband and wife, and between parents 
and their children. Industrial evolution during 
the last two or three decades has not only increased 
the educational value of the school relatively to that 
of the home, but it has exerted a tremendous 

96 



WOMAN AND INDUSTRY 

influence upon woman as the mother of the race. 
Any discussion of the education of women which 
overlooks or minimizes the importance of these 
facts is superficial and almost valueless. 

Primitive industry was placed almost entirely 
in the hands of the female sex. Woman was the 
primitive world's worker. But as the centuries 
glided by her sphere of industrial duties passed 
through many modifications. Gradually, almost 
imperceptibly, her sphere of activities was con- 
tracted until it finally comprised only household 
duties. But the march of industrial progress in 
recent decades has gradually diminished the amount 
of household work. As year after year has rolled 
over the threshold of the present, the home has lost, 
one by one, many of its important and characteristic 
functions. Particularly when located in a city it 
offers very little opportunity for observation of, or 
participation in, constructive work of any kind. 
The home chores are few ; there is no wood to split, 
no garden to hoe, no cow to milk; no blacksmith- 
ing is done, no shoes are made, no cloth is spun, 
no wagon or sled is constructed ; all this work is 
now performed elsewhere. In fact, the city home 
provides no regular or systematic work of any im- 
portance for the youth, and the facilities furnished 
for healthful play and recreation are also inade- 
quate. The home was formerly a workshop, school, 
sleeping place, nursery, dining room, hospital, 
kitchen and laundry. Besides furnishing protec- 
tion and shelter to parents and children, it combined 
the practice of many useful arts under one roof. 
7 97 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

Gradually its varied functions have been dropping 
from it, and have been transferred to specialized 
workmen who occupy isolated workshops. Tools, 
shoes, clothing, furniture, butter, cheese, etc., are 
now rarely manufactured in the home. In many 
cases laundry work is performed elsewhere; much 
of the cooking is done by outsiders ; canned goods, 
bread, pastry, breakfast foods, and even warm 
cooked meals are prepared outside and brought into 
the home ready to eat. Cooperative housekeeping 
is a possibility, if not a probability, of the near 
future. Modification is constantly taking place. 
The school is stretching out its arms toward the 
nursery, and is welcoming the little child into the 
pleasant and healthful atmosphere of the kinder- 
garten. The sick are often sent to the hospital 
instead of attempting to care for them in the incon- 
venient and ill-prepared home. The physician and 
the dentist examine and prescribe for the school 
children in some of our large cities and in many 
German municipalities. The reduction in the 
amount of industrial activity carried on in the home, 
and the changes resulting therefrom, are vital 
factors in any study of the education of the girl. 
If no attention is paid to these changes, if we 
resolutely close our eyes and say there should be 
no modification in the sphere of woman's activity, 
discussion is futile and leads to mere dogmatism. 

Although the modern home still performs many 
of the functions of the primitive one, modern home 
life differs greatly from primitive home life. 
While the effect of the influence of home and of 

98 



WOMAN AND INDUSTRY 

parents upon the young ought not to be under- 
rated, it must be conceded that the complexity of 
modern Hfe subjects the child of to-day to many 
influences which did not affect the child of former 
generations. This change must be acknowledged 
and considered. Whether it be for better or for 
worse need not be here debated ; the situation exists. 
The reality must be faced and the problems resulting 
therefrom solved. The life of the past is forever 
behind us ; the present and the future alone vitally 
concern us. During recent years a considerable 
percentage of the women of the United States have 
passed from under the influence of what Professor 
Patten would call an intensely "local" environment 
into contact with a "general" environment; as a 
result the "clinging vine" is no longer the ideal 
toward which the eyes of American women are 
turned. The wife and mother is not kept so closely 
within the home as she was in past generations. 
She has acquired a host of interests and duties of 
which our grandmothers knew nothing, and she is 
interesting herself in national, state, municipal and 
educational affairs. The woman whose mental 
horizon is limited by the four walls of her home, 
or by the confines of her immediate neighborhood, 
must perforce entertain narrow and warped views 
of life ; but these new interests lie outside the home 
circle, and necessarily exercise a broadening and 
strengthening influence upon her. The American 
woman has become a powerful factor in the land, 
and her direct influence is destined to increase 
rather than to diminish. Society will ultimately be 

99 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

obliged to cease clinging blindly and tenaciously 
to an ideal only appropriate to the past. The 
familiar traditional home and housewife were fitted 
to the period of domestic industry in the days 
before industrial progress had taken many strides 
toward the great industry with its necessary ac- 
companiment, — subdivision of labor. Female in- 
dustry is at present going through even a greater 
and more trying transformation than that through 
which the work of men has passed; woman's work 
is still in the transitional stage. 

If the old view of woman's work and field of 
activity is not abandoned, the woman of the future 
must of necessity become more or less of an idler, 
a dependent, or else assume the thankless and dis- 
couraging role of a person who performs, in a 
wasteful and laborious way, tasks which could and 
should be done much more economically and much 
better outside the four walls of home, in specially 
prepared and efficiently equipped plants and work- 
shops. The change from the domestic to the fac- 
tory system "has released a vast amount of labor 
formerly done within the home by women with 
these results : either this labor has been diverted 
to other places, or into other channels, or has 
become idle." Public opinion has prevented much 
of this labor from being "diverted to other places," 
and has also retarded the movement of certain 
forms of work out from the home. Sewing, cook- 
ing and canning, for example, have by no means 
entirely departed from the home, and may not for 
many years be entirely performed outside the home. 

lOO 



WOMAN AND INDUSTRY 

Some writers have noticed that the movement of 
industry out of the home has caused eras of fancy- 
work, and of club work — "intellectual fancy-work." 
Middle-class women, not wishing to be idle, have 
diverted their energies into these channels with 
results which have not always been hopeful and 
encouraging. Idleness or useless forms of work 
are as undesirable in the case of woman as in the 
case of man. Work and useful activity are the 
birthright and the boon of each and of all, both 
male and female. 

At present there is, undoubtedly, a growing 
tendency for woman to follow her work out of the 
household. In 1900, according to the census re- 
ports, there were 21,776,754 females in the United 
States, between the ages of fifteen and sixty in- 
clusive. About one third of this number, or about 
7,250,000, may be considered to be urban dwellers. 
The number of female wage-earners reported was 
1,031,609. It is safe to assume that nearly all of 
the wage-earners lived in the cities and towns. 
Therefore, on the basis of this assumption, about 
one in every seven adult females living in the cities 
of the United States is a wage-earner, and goes 
outside the home to earn wages. A large per- 
centage of these women, however, are unmarried, 
so it is safe to assume that this movement, in so far 
as it has up to date affected the home, is not as 
significant as the statistics indicate. Nevertheless, 
the inevitable tendency will be to add continually to 
the labor-avoiding methods of doing housework, 
more work will in the future go out of the home, 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

and the house of the future will be simplified. The 
dirt problem which is one of the most vital and dis- 
tressing of domestic problems will be made less dif- 
ficult to solve by the removal of the smoke nuisance, 
by the use of central heating plants exactly as we 
now use central lighting plants, and by the reduc- 
tion in the number of creases, carvings and corners 
in furniture and house furnishing which offer con- 
venient receptacles for dirt and dust. 

The women of the race are standing at the part- 
ing of the ways. Two alternatives are offered 
them : useful and efficient labor to be performed 
outside the traditional household, or leisure and 
sex-parasitism. Although sporadic and isolated 
exceptions may exist in many places for several 
generations to come, the modern tendency toward 
specialization and large scale industry leaves no 
permanent middle ground. When an old art is 
dying out in consequence of being superseded by a 
new art, attempts are invariably made to complicate 
needlessly the processes employed in the old art, — 
to make work.^ The efforts of the various house- 
keeping magazines point toward the decline and 
decay of household industry as a separate and uni- 
fied form of industry. One of the important func- 
tions of these numerous journals is that of earnestly 
striving to dignify useless work through the intro- 
duction of various and sundry complications.^ 
This situation should be discussed from the eco- 
nomic viewpoint and from that of race preservation. 

* Mitchell, The Past in the Present, p. 22. 
^ Commander, The American Idea, Chap. XI. 
102 



WOMAN AND INDUSTRY 

A score of years ago Professor Lester F. Ward 
wrote: "Woman is half of mankind. Civilization 
and progress have hitherto been carried forward by 
the male half alone. Labor and production are now 
suffering from the same cause. It is high time that 
all the forces of society were brought into action, 
and it is especially necessary that those vast com- 
plement forces which woman alone can wield be 
given free rein, and the whole machinery of society 
be set in full and harmonious operation."^ From 
an economic point of view there is much to be said 
in favor of the above argument. Women are 
gradually entering industrial and professional pur- 
suits. If many of this sex are drafted into the 
industrial field the amount of leisure time for the 
workers should be increased. Every transfer from 
the class of useless workers or the class of idlers to 
the ranks of useful labor ought, in a normal econ- 
omy, to tend to reduce working hours and to in- 
crease leisure. The entrance of women into industry 
should, therefore, be accompanied by a decrease in 
the average number of hours worked per day by all 
workers. If, however, it is accompanied by long 
hours and the displacement of considerable num- 
bers of male workers, a fall in the standard of living 
of large numbers of the laboring population seems 
inevitable. The normal result of an orderly, sys- 
tematic introduction of women into industry would 
be increased leisure for all and higher standards of 
living. In reality, this social change, like all others, 
will be accompanied by more or less suffering and 

^Dynamic Sociology, Vol. I : 657. 
103 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

hardship. Increased leisure ought not to mean 
idleness ; but social enjoyment, intellectual enjoy- 
ment, or the pursuit of an avocation. The same 
economic laws and the same law of wages apply to 
woman as to man. If women are partially sub- 
sidized, if some work below a ''living wage," the 
wages of all women are affected and incidentally 
those of men, unless union organization prevents 
this undesirable result. 

Race degeneration and decay first manifest them- 
selves in womankind. The future of the American 
people is wrapped up in the solution of the problem 
of the future sphere of woman's activity. If wo- 
man goes outside the home in order to become an 
industrial or professional worker, we are face to 
face with a serious problem as to the care and 
training of children, and the maintenance of marital 
relations. It has been repeatedly and vociferously 
declared, with a large measure of truth, that when 
married women become wage-earners in industries 
carried on outside the home, the cleanliness, health- 
fulness and moral influence of the home is unfavor- 
ably affected. Granting that this be true, it may 
reasonably be asked: Is not this evil situation due, 
on the one hand, to unfavorable conditions now 
obtaining in modern industry, and, on the other 
hand, to the fact that the work of the household 
has not as yet been sufficiently simplified ? Are not 
the evils which now rise so ominously above the 
social horizon those which must inevitably accom- 
pany an era of transition? Are we not mistaking, 
because of insufficient investigation, merely tem- 

104 



WOMAN AND INDUSTRY 

porary and superficial Ills for permanent and deep- 
seated diseases ? Shorter hours and better sanitary 
arrangements in factories will undoubtedly follow 
the entrance of large numbers of women into in- 
dustry, and the organization of female workers into 
strong labor organizations affiliated with those of 
men. Thus the peculiar evils of factory work will 
be diminished. 

Industrial history unmistakably points to the 
conclusion that woman's household industry is 
doomed. Little will permanently remain, and what 
does remain can, in a large measure, be most 
efficiently performed by specialized workers going 
from one household to another. Household work 
when thus performed will attain a professional 
dignity which has hitherto been entirely lacking. 
Scrubbing and baking, brewing and sewing on a 
small scale cannot be as readily dignified as when 
performed on a large scale. Scientific precision 
and expert knowledge may find profitable applica- 
tion to these occupations when performed on a large 
scale. The chief cook in a large hotel or apartment 
house may well rank in professional standing along- 
side the physician. The operators of a compressed 
air carpet cleaner are a grade above the man with 
the wire carpet beater. The worker in an airy, 
well-ventilated garment factory is more expert than 
the sewing-machine operator in the sweat shop, 
or in the home dressmaking establishment. The 
two important questions are : How can industry be 
so modified as to make it healthful for workers 
whether they be men or women ? How can women 

105 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

be best prepared for industrial and professional 
occupations under the new conditions? The first 
question must be answered by means of legislation 
and trade unionism, the second by our educational 
authorities. 

If these two problems are resolutely studied there 
is no good historical reason for believing that racial 
deterioration must be the inevitable result of wo- 
man's work outside the home. The mothers in all 
nations, when the latter were at the summit of their 
national strength, have invariably been workers, not 
idlers or parasites. One of the dangers which flow 
out of the enormous multiplication in wealth pro- 
duction in modern times is idleness — parasitism — 
on the part of large classes of men and women. 
In the past history of the world parasitism affected 
only a small percentage of the population. But in 
recent years the productive capacity of society has 
so increased that, with proper adjustment of work 
and equitable distribution of the products of labor, 
hunger and famine need no longer be feared by the 
masses in Western countries. Unfortunately, as 
hunger and famine retire into the background, a 
new menace — sex and class parasitism on a whole- 
sale scale — confronts society. In the case of in- 
ferior animals, as well as in the case of human 
beings, the strong, true, normal mother has ever 
been a worker. Idleness begets degeneracy in 
woman as well as in man, and the idleness of the 
woman is the more dangerous to the welfare of 
the race. "Other causes may, and do, lead to the 
enervation and the degeneration of a race; the 

io6 



WOMAN AND INDUSTRY 

parasitism of its child-bearing women must."^ In 
short, working women, not women of leisure, have 
normal instincts. Only working women can be 
the mothers of a strong and vigorous race. ''Our 
problem is so to adapt the world to the woman who 
works that she may combine motherhood with in- 
dustry. "^ The crux of the ''woman problem" and 
one important factor in the question of "race 
suicide" lies wrapped up with the contraction of 
the sphere of woman's work. The outward ex- 
pression of parasitism among the well-to-do of the 
present era is found in such phenomena as bridge 
whist parties, sensational banquets, automobile 
races, horse shows and various other forms of dis- 
sipation and lust; or in the case of those only 
partially on the road toward parasitism, expression 
is found in some form of intellectual or manual 
"make-work," or in the needless complication of 
relatively simple duties. The vital evils are, how- 
ever, deeply hidden, and manifest themselves more 
slowly in point of time. 

Woman, herself, is not oblivious to the danger of 
her position. She has given voice to the cry: 
"Give us work, or we perish." "We demand that 
in that new strange world which is arising alike 
upon men and women, where nothing is as it was, 
and all things are assuming new shapes and rela- 
tions, we demand that in this new world we also 
shall have our share of honored and socially useful 

* Olive Schreiner, Cosmopolitan, Vol. 28 : 192. See also 
Parsons, The Family, pp. 346-7* 354- 

' Commander, The American Idea, p. 268. 
107 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

human toil, our half of the labor of the children of 
woman. "^ Economic considerations and the neces- 
sities of racial progress demand that woman con- 
tinue, but under new conditions, to be an industrial 
worker. One of the most important functions of 
education in the decades which lie just ahead will 
be to aid in adjustirg industrial affairs so that 
industrial or professional activity may not be in- 
imical to motherhood. 

^ Schreiner, Cosmopolitan, Vol. 28 : 54. 



108 



CHAPTER VI 
EDUCATION OF WOMEN 

The home and the school are two great bulwarks 
which have safeguarded Occidental civilization and 
culture. Other institutions have indeed made 
valuable contributions, but to the home and the 
school we are indebted for the noblest fruits of 
Western development. Although we may revere 
and honor either or both, it must not be forgotten 
or overlooked that these words do not stand for 
fixed and unyielding concepts ; these two institu- 
tions are ever in a state of mobility and fluxion. 
As the years pass by, all industrial and social in- 
stitutions undergo constant change ; the relative 
importance and value of this function of one in- 
creases, while that function of another decreases. 
A readjustment is necessary in order to meet the 
new situation satisfactorily. Progress is change — 
growth on the one hand, decay on the other. New 
functions and duties devolve upon certain social 
institutions, and some of the old functions are 
gradually transferred from one institution to an- 
other. New inventions, new methods of rapid 
transportation, Increased trade, the growth of cities, 
have changed radically and almost fundamentally 
the relations existing between the home and the 

109 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

school. Just as the factory has borrowed many 
of the functions formerly exercised by the home, 
so on the other hand has the school assumed many 
of the duties which once devolved upon the home. 
Boys and girls grow to manhood and woman- 
hood under the guiding and dominating influence 
of three important and, in a large measure, distinct 
social mstitutions — the home, the school and the 
playground. These institutions are chiefly respon- 
sible to society for the growth and proper mental, 
moral and physical development of the child. Each 
has its own distinct duties and functions, but the 
division is not fixed and invariable, nor is the line 
of demarkation between the special fields of each 
always easy to draw. To-day's demands upon each 
are different from, those of yesterday,, and the 
future requirements will not be identical with those 
of to-day. The nature and character of school 
work and home duties are in a state of evolution and 
of rapid adjustment to unique conditions and un- 
usual situations, which are the result of recent social 
and industrial changes and progress. In past gen- 
erations the influence of the home overshadowed 
that of the remaining two institutions. In the home 
the child received the major part of his training for 
his after life. The home produced and prepared 
nearly all the food consumed by the members of the 
family ; much of the work which is now carried on 
in the factory was then performed in the home. 
It was the scene of diversified industry as well as 
the center of the child's social Hfe; in contrast, the 
school was merely the place where the famous three 
no 



EDUCATION OF WOMEN 

R's were expounded to the unwilling youth; the 
playground was broad and spacious, often consist- 
ing of an entire farm. This rural playground was, 
to a considerable extent, under the watchful eye of 
the parents; the opportunity for mischief and the 
danger from immoral influences were reduced far 
below those offered by the city street or alley. 
The disappearance of the playground and the loss 
of many forms of industry are two of the chief 
causes of the educational inefficiency of the city 
home of to-day as contrasted with the rural home 
of one or two generations ago. 

The industrial transformations which have al- 
ready been considered are visibly affecting the 
influence of the home upon the child. Indeed, in 
many of the poorer homes of the cities where both 
father and mother are wage-earners, the function 
of the home has been reduced practically to that of 
a mere eating and sleeping place. Amusement, 
social intercourse, the meeting with friends, all 
those happy associations which usually cluster 
around the concept of home are transferred to the 
public meeting place, the theater, the summer gar- 
den, the saloon, the club, the street corner and the 
dance hall. Such conditions are undoubtedly ab- 
normal, and do not represent the true line of prog- 
ress ; nevertheless, it is a fact that in the future the 
child will be more and more given into the hands 
of the trained nurse, the skilled kindergartner, the 
playground director and the teachers of academic 
studies and of manual training. Whether the home 
be good or bad, the child of the future must, in a 

III 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

larger measure than did the child of former gen- 
erations, come under the influence of specialists 
and experts who are not members of his family; 
and the child is more and more to be called beyond 
the walls of his home. The recent changes in the 
scope and functions of the school point in this 
direction. In the case of the "undesirable" home, 
it is now generally admitted that there are excellent 
reasons for the substitution of school for home 
influence ; but if the mother is to spend more of her 
time outside the home, if she is to be identified with 
interests which are not of the household, the school 
must stand ready to assist in a larger measure in 
the care and training of the children from all homes, 
good, bad or indifferent. As a direct result of the 
decrease in the functions of the home and the 
changing status of women, the scope of school work 
is being gradually extended. On the other hand, 
our educational and industrial life has become so 
complex that few mothers are capable of assuming 
entire charge of the care and training of the child. 
The education and training of children, like the 
manufacture of delicate and intricate pieces of 
mechanism, demand the work and energy of skilled 
workers in special lines. 

The belief, so prevalent, that the home is always 
the best place for young children to be, and that 
they should be under its influence as much as pos- 
sible, is unfortunately not always warranted by the 
facts. Many parents have no conception of the 
conditions which are necessary for the intellectual, 
moral and physical well-being of children. The 



EDUCATION OF WO M E N 

influence of many homes Is vicious, degrading and, 
in some cases, immoral. In so far as it is possible 
to remove the young from such an atmosphere, and 
to substitute a better environment, to that extent is 
the moral and ethical advancement of society aided. 
The rights of the family are not so sacred and in- 
violable as many persons stoutly maintain. Society 
has the right, and it is its duty, to demand such 
conditions in the home as will give the young 
opportunity for healthy development, both morally 
and physically. No plea for the rights and integrity 
of the family should be allowed to befog the issue. 
The rights of society are paramount and take pre- 
cedence over those of any social or governmental 
institution. This is the lesson which modern in- 
dustrial and social progress is teaching us. 

As long as homes exist which are not desirable 
living places for the young child, society ought to 
protect itself by taking the child wholly or partially 
from the care of the parents forming that home. 
Care must be taken to prevent parents from feeling 
that all the responsibility for the welfare of the 
child is taken from their shoulders. There is a 
tendency, however, to exaggerate the dangers of 
paternalism of this sort. Fears are expressed which 
sound very similar to those manifested at an earlier 
period against tax-supported public schools. For 
example. Dr. Wayland in his Political Economy 
(1837) argues that the expenses of the public 
schools may be provided "partly by a general fund ; 
this fund should, however, never defray m.ore than 
a portion of the expense, for no man values highly 
S 113 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

what he gets for nothing." The free public school 
has, nevertheless, won a firm foothold, and free 
text-books are being accepted as a matter of course. 
May not further steps in the same general direction 
be also attended by good results ? But severe social 
condemnation should be visited upon parents who 
bring children into the world for whom they mani- 
festly will be unable to provide properly. 

The parental school teaches educators a valuable 
lesson. The school of the future will certainly use 
some of the methods and mechanism of this institu- 
tion. The parental school is designed to take the 
place of the home in cases where the latter is de- 
ficient in the qualities which are requisite for a 
good home. Work, physical exercise and drills, 
play, and the ordinary school routine enter into the 
curriculum at these schools. The child is kept at 
the school day and night under the care of com- 
petent instructors. It becomes temporarily the 
home of the pupil. In the future, borrowing some 
of the features of the parental school, the regular 
public school will probably take the child from 
morning until the latter .part of the afternoon. 
Noon meals will be served, and the study periods 
will be interspersed with work and play appropriate 
to the grade and age of the child. The school will 
become a workshop and a playground as well as a 
place for study and reading of books. The book 
will be considered to be a workshop aid, and will be 
used when the child in his conflict with various 
obstacles sees the necessity for it. The book is 
only a tool, a means to an end, and is effectively 
114 



EDUCATION OF WOMEN 

used only when the child realizes the need of it. 
The book represents experience received second- 
hand. In order to assimilate its contents thoroughly 
and completely, first-hand actual experience and 
contact with materials must be allowed. 

These changes will not be worked out in a day 
or a year; but slowly and surely the school is add- 
ing to its functions and broadening its scope. If 
woman is to engage in industrial pursuits, or to 
participate in the educational and political move- 
ments and agitations of the day, she must neglect 
or be relieved of many of her household cares and 
duties. The public school is the one institution 
which can be utilized to care properly for the chil- 
dren during the daytime. The training and care 
received by young children from expert kinder- 
gartners and primary teachers is superior to that 
which the average mother can give, and infinitely 
better than that usually received from the household 
servants, or the older brother or sister. Ignorance 
on the part of even a few is expensive to the com- 
munity. The most important work of the school 
should be that of compensating for the weakness 
and inefficiency of the home as a training school for 
the young, or that of counteracting its maleficent 
influence. The growing educational importance of 
the school, as compared with the home, points to- 
ward a wider diffusion of knowledge and toward 
greater equality in education and culture. Homes 
are greatly dissimilar as to internal and external 
environment, and home training is consequently of 
very different quality and characteristics. The 

115 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

school — any one particular school — offers a prac- 
tically uniform set of conditions for all pupils. As 
the influence of the public school increases and is 
extended to all children, the artificial inequality 
among men is reduced. A distinction must be 
drawn between natural and artificial inequality. 
The variation in human ability is much greater at 
present than would result solely from natural in- 
equality, and is the result of unequal diffusion of 
knowledge and of unequal economic opportunity. 
The great differentiation between men of the same 
race and nationality is chiefly one of environment, 
of circumstances which need not be referred back 
to the distant past. In so far as useful instruction 
and training — mental, physical and industrial — is 
extended to all, will exploitation of the poor by the 
rich, the uneducated by the educated, the mass by 
the few, be decreased and made difficult. 

Women are to play an important role in de- 
termining the trend of education in the future. 
They are to influence and modify educational aims 
and methods ; they will do much to fix the value 
and determine the scope of the work of the public 
school. But the woman whose time is entirely 
occupied with household cares and duties cannot 
enter upon the broader field of work and activity 
which many of her enthusiastic sisters are prophesy- 
ing for their sex. If the great mass of women are 
to take their place beside men in the industrial, pro- 
fessional or educational world, more of their home 
duties, educational and otherwise, must be turned 
over to specialists, who will perform the work out- 

ii6 



EDUCATION OF WOMEN 

side the home or come to It at stated intervals. 
There is no other probable solution ; the maid-of- 
all-work is an anomaly, a survival, in the industrial 
field. 

The enhanced importance of the school in the 
education of men and women may, therefore, be 
expected to produce two distinct and important 
results. First, it partially removes one of the most 
difficult barriers which has long obstructed the up- 
ward path for the female sex. Secondly, it tends 
to produce a more uniform diffusion of knowledge, 
a greater equality in environmental conditions, and 
as a result a more equitable distribution of oppor- 
tunity. Woman, In urging the Introduction of the 
so-called educational "fads," Is building even better 
than she anticipated. Education — the wide dif- 
fusion of accumulated knowledge and experience 
— Is a lubricant which diminishes the friction in 
social adjustments to new environmental conditions. 

It must not, however, be forgotten that although 
the home is losing many of its former functions, 
although the mother is called out of the home for a 
portion of each day, there is no valid reason for 
believing that the home will not continue to be the 
greatest and most basal of all American institutions. 
The care of the children during a portion of the 
day, the choice of their diet and clothing, the duty 
of making the home comfortable, pleasant, inviting 
and healthful must still devolve in some measure 
upon the wife and mother. Although in the future a 
considerable portion of what was the household 
work in the past will be performed by specialists, 

117 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

the mother's training for the management of a 
household, judged in the Hght of to-day's experi- 
ence, will ever remain an important factor in the 
development of the young. 

The chief reasons for the diminished educational 
value of the home may be summarized under three 
heads, (i) The industrial functions of the home 
are gradually disappearing. (2) The play space in 
the immediate vicinity of the city home, and which 
is under the direct supervision of the mother, has 
been greatly reduced or has entirely disappeared. 
(3) Industrial changes are affecting the status of 
woman ; she is losing her position as a housekeeper. 
The tendency is to drive her out of the home into 
industrial or professional pursuits, or to convert 
her into an idler. In either case the importance of 
the mother as an educator is diminished. If the 
mother is an idler, she is living an abnormal life, 
and her influence is not of the proper kind. On the 
other hand, the time of the working mother is occu- 
pied in attending to many duties not pertaining to, 
and usually conflicting with, the care and training 
of children. 

The above considerations make it evident that 
the problem which confronts the school during the 
present period of transition is an unusual and a 
peculiarly difficult one. The education of the girl 
presents a double task during the period of adjust- 
ment to city environment and to new industrial 
methods. The girl must be prepared to be a 
home maker in the old sense of the term, and also 
an industrial worker; she must be fitted for the 
118 



EDUCATION OF WOMEN 

traditional sphere of woman with its multipHcity of 
duties, and also for earning a livelihood in com- 
petition with men in the industrial, commercial and 
professional world. A woman ought to know how 
to cook and to sew, she should understand the rela- 
tive nutritive values of different foods and be 
familiar with the elementary principles of household 
sanitation and home decoration, and she ought to be 
able to properly care for her children. On the 
other hand, a woman should be able to support 
herself outside the home, if occasion demands it. 
Many will not give assent to the last proposition; 
but do such persons look the matter squarely in the 
face? Do they not take refuge in an appeal to the 
past? In the future all women may become wage 
earners, but this is a contingent which will not arise 
at least m the immediate future. Cooking, for 
example, may at some future time be done entirely 
outside the home by well-trained experts ; but until 
that time comes the wife and mother should be 
prepared to undertake the feeding of the household. 
Indeed, training in domestic science and in the care 
of a home are to-day even more important than in 
the past, because the stamina and vigor of a race of 
city dwellers are dependent in such a large measure 
upon proper diet and proper ventilation of homes, 
schools and workshops. The natural conditions 
surrounding the child living in a rural district are 
more healthful than the artificial environment of 
the city. The improperly nourished and ill-cared- 
for child of the country has a better opportunity 
for health and strength than one correspondingly 

iig 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

neglected in the city, although both are seriously 
handicapped. 

The discussion of the proper preparation for 
earning a living need not be entered into at this 
point. If women enter into industrial and profes- 
sional life, and work beside men, this portion of 
their training must, of necessity, approximate that 
of men. What especially concerns us now is to 
show the vital importance of training for home 
making, and to emphasize the economic and social 
importance, at the present time, of domestic science 
in the public schools of this country. 

It has often been asserted, by those familiar with 
the condition and manner of living of the poor, 
that the latter live upon food which is badly cooked, 
poorly served, not wisely selected and of little 
variety. The vast majority of the people of this 
progressive country have little knowledge of the 
value of food stuffs or of the importance of a 
well-chosen diet. There is more than a modicum 
of truth in the adage which certain makers of break- 
fast foods are fond of quoting: *'Tell me what you 
eat and I will tell you what you are." Diet is one 
of the great factors in determining the growth and 
development of the child. In the past, however, 
little thought has been given to the feeding of the 
human animal. Our cooks have not been experts; 
they have known little or nothing of the proper 
combinations of food, of the nutritive value of cer- 
tain foods, or of the proper methods of preparing 
and of serving foods. When man lived an out- 
door life almost exclusively, this was not of as much 

120 



EDUCATION OF WOMEN 

consequence as it is when he leads a more sedentary 
life, as it is since he is confined the major portion 
of the day within four walls. Dyspepsia, Bright's 
disease and other modern ills are the penalties for 
non-adjustment and non-conformity to the require- 
ments of modern city life. But more vital and 
dangerous to society are the consequent stunting 
and weakening of the child. Improper food and 
diet make the weakling, the degenerate and the 
inefficient. 

An elementary knowledge of cooking, sewing, 
household sanitation, the keeping of household ac- 
counts, the decoration and care of the home, should 
be given to all the girls in our ward schools. If 
we wait until the high school is reached we fail to 
give this training to a large percentage of those 
whose home training in these arts is little or none. 
Domestic science, or household economics, in the col- 
lege is good, domestic science and art in the high 
school are better, but cooking, sewing, sanitation 
and household art in the elementary and night 
schools are best, — these are essential to the improve- 
ment of the home of the next generation. This 
fact should be proclaimed by every woman's club, 
by every teacher's association, and by every organi- 
zation devoted to the social, educational and eco- 
nomic advancement of the poorer classes. There is 
little danger of placing too much emphasis upon 
this point. 

The position of a woman in charge of the home 
IS one which is extremely potent for good or for 
evil. The physical and moral welfare of each child 

121 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

is, now as in the past, largely determined by the 
mother, and therefore the future of the race is to a 
considerable degree in the keeping of the female sex. 
Improper food and squalid and uninviting home 
environment are among the chief supports of the 
brewery and the saloon. Real, effective temperance 
work begins at this point. Improvement in home 
conditions and provision for social meetings and 
enjoyment in wholesome and inviting surroundings 
will strike deadly blows at the great evil of in- 
temperance. Dr. Corwin, in charge of the welfare 
work of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, has 
made this significant statement: "To a hungry 
man a home's attractiveness begins at the table. 
But if he come home to a supper of tasteless, indi- 
gestible food, served without any attempt at making 
it inviting or the table attractive, is there any won- 
der that he seeks the saloon for stimulants?" The 
work of the school should render efficient service 
in the prevention of both physical and moral disease. 
The high price of food is partially the result 
of a demand for, and the consumption of, more 
food than is needed to maintain health and vigor; 
it is also in a measure due to wasteful and im- 
proper, or partial, utilization of food stuffs. Con- 
sumption in a given country or locality should be 
so adjusted and proportioned as to utilize, where 
possible, those goods which may be produced at 
least expense. ''Many times the amount of food 
might be obtained, with no increase of proportional 
cost, if the people would be content with a diet 
containing the different articles of food in that 

122 



EDUCATION OF WOMEN 

proportion which will allow the land to be employed 
in the production of those commodities for which 
it is best fitted."^ A more economic consumption 
would decrease the relative proportion of workers 
engaged in producing the necessities of life, thus 
enabHng a greater amount of the comforts of life to 
be produced, — a potent factor in raising the stand- 
ard of well-being. 

A scientific knowledge of the nutritive value of 
different foods would enable consumers to find and 
to use proper substitutes for a food, as for example 
meat, the price of which has suddenly been raised. 
If such knowledge was general throughout the 
country, the consumer would be able to prevent or 
at least to check arbitrary and unreasonable changes 
in the price of many food stuif s. 

Education and economics enter their protests 
against the useless frittering away of woman's life 
in a foolish and senseless round of so-called social 
duties, in making extraordinary quantities of "fancy 
work," or in the performance of duties which could 
be better attended to by specialists outside the 
home. Education is no longer to be considered an 
end in itself. Art for art's sake, culture for cul- 
ture's sake, and education for the sake of an edu- 
cation are ideals which ought to be forever relegated 
to the rear. Education is a means to an end, it is 
a tool ; it better prepares the raw material entrusted 
to its care for the duties which will devolve upon 
each bit of human material. To earn a living and 
properly to perform the duties of parenthood are 

* Patten, Premises of Political Economy, p. 62. 
123 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

important obligations which will devolve upon a 
large percentage of those now in school. Can we 
afford to overlook the practical things of life when 
preparing our school curriculum? Whatever may 
be the verdict as to many of Herbert Spencer's 
educational theories, certainly all must admit that 
he did a commendable and valuable service in em- 
phasizing the value of the practical things with 
which education should deal. Surely, if it is worth 
while to prepare, publish and spread broadcast 
bulletins regarding the proper treatment and care of 
cattle and hogs, it is also worth while to devote some 
time and attention to the needs of the growing 
child. One of the most fruitful and ever-present 
sources of depravity and crime is the improper 
nourishment and care of children ; and this is 
chiefly the result of ignorance. Which is likely to 
be of the greatest value to the average man or 
woman, — to be able to analyze a sentence, or to 
determine in an approximate way the value of dif- 
ferent food materials? Is it better to be able to 
read Latin, or to understand how to breathe deeply 
and correctly? Is it better to be able to bound 
China, or to drive a nail? The notion that an edu- 
cated man or woman should do no useful work, 
manual or otherwise, is out of date and pernicious. 
Education should aim to produce the useful, ener- 
getic manual or mental worker, no matter whether 
the student be male or female. 

The young women of to-day are developing in 
an atmosphere which is radically different from 
that which enveloped the early years of their grand- 

124 



EDUCATION OF WOMEN 

mothers. Their point of view regarding their own 
work and position in the economic and industrial 
world will inevitably be greatly modified by the 
change. Professor Patten has told us that *'the 
city home of the future will be built by two who 
are educated, side by side, in the public school, 
whose industrial careers are side by side in the 
factory, whose plans of life, formed by the same 
city outlook, have resulted in like powers and 
parallel interests." The concept of wide and irre- 
movable differences in the qualifications and abili- 
ties of the two sexes in the intellectual and industrial 
world will disappear in the light of these new 
relationships. 

The proper education of girls is one of the most 
important problems connected with the improve- 
ment of conditions in the crowded industrial centers 
of our country. The need here is especially great 
and important. Girls have entered our school sys- 
tem and have followed the curriculum devised for 
the boys. In the upper grammar grades and in the 
high school their work should be different in many 
respects from that of the boys. On the other hand, 
a cultural training, while important and desirable, 
is not, or should not be, the chief aim of the teacher 
of girls. Under the now existing circumstances, 
the duties of the husband take him outside the 
family circle for the greater portion of each day, on 
him now falls as a rule the entire burden of furnish- 
ing the necessities and comforts of the home; the 
duties of the wife still keep her within the home to 
a greater extent, on her still rests a portion at least 

125 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

of the burden of preparing the food and clothes, 
and of caring for the household. As long as these 
facts remain nothing can so ennoble womanhood as 
a thorough study and preparation for the duties of 
home making. Such training ought not to be over- 
looked in order to give the girl a knowledge of 
literature, languages, civil government, or a prep- 
aration for earning a livelihood. But, on the other 
hand, ability to earn a livelihood and actual entrance 
into the industrial world will also do much to exalt 
womanhood and to place woman upon a high plane, 
to make her independent of the whims and caprices 
of the other sex. And, if the analysis of social 
progress presented in the preceding pages is accu- 
rate, training for industrial and professional pur- 
suits will, as the years go by, occupy an increasingly 
important place in the educational program for 
young ladies. 



126 



CHAPTER VII 

THE INDUSTRIAL AND EDUCATIONAL VALUE 

OF MANUAL TRAINING AND LABORATORY 

WORK 

The introduction of manual training and labora- 
tory work into the public-school system as a per- 
manent and valued part of its curriculum is one 
of the first and one of the most significant features 
of the recent era of educational advance. The 
parallel between this era and the earlier one is 
striking. In each case a war was followed by rapid 
industrial progress and wild speculation, leading 
to a severe industrial depression. This crisis was, 
in each period, followed, as has been previously 
mentioned, by the rapid growth of labor organiza- 
tions, the spread of propaganda of various sorts, 
and by a vigorous agitation in favor of public edu- 
cation. The introduction of manual training and 
of laboratory work definitely marks an important 
modification in the conception of the purpose and 
methods of school instruction, and is the visible 
manifestation of the influence of important changes 
in industrial methods and social conditions. The 
laboratory and the manual-training school are 
not content with mere passive receptivity on the 
part of the student, but require self-activity and 

127 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

constructive work. The introduction of these two 
educational accessories indicates to the student of 
educational progress that the home had, by that 
time, lost much of its industrial character, and that 
division of labor was then an important factor in 
the industrial world. At that time the school passed 
from the old to the new concept of its duties ; edu- 
cation then became more than mere intellectual 
gymnastics and memory drill. Mere passive recep- 
tion of the words and ideas of teacher and text- 
book was then necessarily replaced, in some degree, 
by personal observation, judgment, manual skill 
and actual contact with materials and apparatus. 
The use by the teacher of apparatus to demonstrate 
the laws presented in the text-book or in the lecture 
marked a long step forward; but the actual placing 
of that apparatus in the hands of the pupil was still 
more important. The value of this kind of experi- 
ence and training may be considered from two, not 
necessarily conflicting, points of view, — educational 
and industrial. What is its value as a training 
leading to a well-rounded character and intellect; 
and what is its value in training up a body of 
efficient workers in all kinds and grades of indus- 
trial work? 

As has been observed in preceding chapters, in 
earlier generations the need of the kind of training 
which these two features of our modern curriculum 
impart was small, and moreover it could be ob- 
tained outside the school. Only recently have ac- 
curate quantitative and qualitative methods of 
measurement been introduced into all industrial 

128 



VALUE OF MANUAL TRAINING 

processes. Interchangeable parts of machinery re- 
quire that two pieces be ahnost identical. The 
variation of the fraction of the hundredth or even 
of the thousandth of an inch will often render a 
piece worthless. The chemist, the physicist and the 
engineer are now indispensable in the industrial 
world. If the home still offered the same oppor- 
tunities for training in manual work, and if it still 
afforded the same chance for contact with materials 
as it did under more primitive conditions, such 
training would nevertheless be clearly inadequate to 
meet the present requirements, as our skilled 
workers and engineers require training in accuracy. 
On the other hand, the work in our shops has 
become so specialized that a boy from the time of 
his entrance is forced into a rigid and monotonous 
routine, usually that of tending automatic or semi- 
automatic machines. He is able to observe or learn 
little beyond the few simple operations required of 
him. As a consequence he soon gets into a rut, and 
is unable to change readily to another kind of work 
unless it is of a similar routine character. It is this 
unreasoning, uncomprehending boy who becomes 
the inefficient and unreliable workman. Appren- 
tices are given better opportunities, it is true, but 
only a limited number of engineering establish- 
ments receive apprentices. 

The value of the home and the shop as factors 
in the training of future foremen, workmen and 
engineers has greatly decreased as a result of the 
changes just mentioned. As this function of these 
two important institutions atrophies, the school is 
9 129 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

obliged to take upon itself new obligations ; and its 
proper sphere of action enlarges to meet the new 
sitviation. The technical school, the manual-train- 
ing high school, ward-school manual training and 
the laboratory have been grafted on to our educa- 
tional system to meet the demands for boys who 
possess trained hands and eyes, — boys who are able 
to plan and to execute, — ^boys who are industrious 
and not afraid of overalls and jumpers, — boys who 
have to a high degree the power of applying 
knowledge to industrial operations. The value of 
a good home in the building of character is not 
minimized or called into question. But the changed 
environment in and about the home, its complete 
isolation from productive industry, cooking ex- 
cepted, has caused it to lose its leading position as 
a factor in industrial training. 

The future of manufacture depends largely upon 
the new human material which is supplied to the 
shop and factory. Brains, the ability to do, not 
stores of unassimilated and unapplicable knowledge, 
is the great need and demand of to-day in the 
machine shop and the foundry as well as in the 
counting house and the Congressional chamber. 
The school must be looked to in the future to fill 
this standing order for trained, resourceful men. 

Lines of demarkation must be carefully drawn 
between the trade, the manual-training and the 
technical school. All three are important; each has 
its legitimate sphere, but their ends and aims are 
different. Manual training aims to give all students 
training of hand and eye. It tries to give students 

130 



VALUE OF MANUAL TRAINING 

experience and actual contact with materials and 
processes. The trade school turns its energies 
toward fitting the student for some particular trade. 
The manual-training school, on the other hand, 
. attempts to give a more general training. The 
latter does not aim to tra-in carpenters, blacksmiths, 
machinists, or mechanical draftsmen, but it does 
strive to give the student a first-hand knowledge 
of industrial operations and processes. On the 
other hand, it does not aim to present the scientific 
principles of engineering; this function belongs to 
the technical school. The call for manual training 
is a direct result of the extensive modifications in 
our industrial and social life ; its aim is primarily 
disciplinary. Although manual training fits young 
men for certain classes of occupations rather than 
for others, this is an indirect and incidental result. 
High-school manual-training work is more highly 
specialized than ward-school work, and is un- 
doubtedly more valuable for the future mechanic 
or engineer than for the lawyer or the merchant. 
The ward-school manual work is, on the other hand, 
almost, if not quite, equally valuable for all students. 
The trade school ought to complete the school train- 
ing of a skilled worker who has taken the manual- 
training work which should be given by the public 
schools. The trade school is to the skilled artisan 
what the technical school is to the engineer; and 
the technical school is to the manual-training high 
school what the college is to the English or Latin 
high school. The manual-training high school is 

131 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

designed to furnish a preparation for the trade 
school, the technical school or for apprenticeship. 

The technical school provides preparation for 
students who intend to become professional mining, 
electrical, civil, mechanical, textile or chemical 
engineers. The trade school has never been a part 
of our public-school system, while the manual-train- 
ing work is now found in the curriculum of all our 
good city schools. Nearly all, if not all, of our 
State Universities have technical departments. Do- 
mestic science is properly a subdivision under the 
general head of manual training. This work is to 
the girls what shop work and mechanical drawing 
are to the boys. Before the sixth or seventh grade 
the work is rarely differentiated according to sex; 
after that period as a rule it is. As in the case of 
the work for boys, domestic science is given pri- 
marily for its educational value; the practical les- 
sons are subordinate although very important. 

Manual training aids particularly two classes of 
workers in the industrial field : first, the young men 
who are fitted for, and able to take, advanced tech- 
nical work; second, those who must go directly 
from the grammar or high school into the shop, or 
in some cases into the trade school. 

The latter class must not be overlooked or neg- 
lected as unimportant. It is unfortunate that as 
yet our school curricula are drawn up primarily to 
benefit the small percentage who go to college or 
technical school ; secondary consideration only is 
granted the larger number who go directly into their 
life work. The future progress and prosperity 

132 



VALUE OF MANUAL TRAINING 

of the country is as dependent upon a trained 
rank and file in the shops as upon the superior 
character and training of our superintendents and 
engineers. The value of higher technical training 
is dependent upon the efficiency of the preparatory 
work in a twofold manner. The quality of the 
work done by a student in the technical school is 
materially affected by the kind of training which 
he has previously received in the preparatory 
schools; and the best engineer needs competent 
workmen in order to carry his projects to a suc- 
cessful issue. Our technical schools might be the 
best in the world ; their graduates might be the very 
skilful engineers, chemists, superintendents and 
designers, and yet if the workmen who are to be 
directed by these men are inefficient and unskilful 
the results of their combined efforts would not be 
encouraging. Our industrial system would be top- 
heavy. 

The boy who goes into the shop in his early 
youth must be taught neatness and accuracy; and 
he should understand the elementary principles of 
wood and metal working, mechanical drawing, alge- 
bra and geometry, and have a fair command of the 
English language. If the boy can be kept in school 
until the end of his sixteenth year this amount of 
training can be given him. The last two years of 
this course, which are the first and second years 
of the average manual-training high-school course, 
are extremely important. The value of this work 
is often underestimated. Technical education was 
introduced before manual training, and when the 

133 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

latter was first recognized it found a place only in 
the high school. Gradually, grade by grade, it has 
crept down toward the kindergarten until, in many 
American cities, manual training is found in each 
of the twelve grades. The universal introduction 
of such work into the public-school system should 
be demanded by clear-sighted employers and labor 
leaders ; but, in order that the young man may reap 
the benefits the school age must also be raised. If 
the employer and employee will unite on this propo- 
sition, it will mean much in the future. In the long 
run the interests of both are certainly harmonious 
in this instance. A well-trained class of workers 
means the maintenance of industrial supremacy, and 
the greater likelihood of peaceful relations between 
employer and employee. Ignorant, inefficient and 
^'sweated" laborers are a menace to industrial 
growth and development. 

The large number of students, living in all sec- 
tions ot the United States, who are taking work in 
the correspondence schools, in public, private or 
Y. M. C. A. night schools, testifies to the great 
demand for elementary technical education and 
manual training. Many of these persons left school 
at an early age because they were unable to receive 
Instruction of this character. School teachers are, 
as a rule, very conservative. They are too often 
far removed from the practical affairs of life, and 
few of them have received such an education as 
will make them appreciate the need of industrial 
and manual training. This movement toward 
greater emphasis on mdustrlal education must be 



VALUE OF MANUAL TRAINING 

accelerated by those actively engaged in industrial 
pursuits. The latter should be keenly appreciative 
of the need of well-prepared timber for the future 
industrial edifice. 

Turning our attention to the other boy, the future 
technical-school student, the question immediately 
arises : What preparation does he require ? It may 
be safely assumed, with little fear of controversy, 
that intellectual training alone does not properly fit 
any boy, especially one who is to be engaged in 
engineering pursuits, for the active duties of life. 
It is extremely desirable, if not absolutely necessary, 
that the youth who is to be the future engineer, 
superintendent, foreman or manager should receive 
a careful training of hand and eye, and that he 
should be brought into direct and personal contact 
with materials and machinery before he enters the 
technical school at the age of eighteen or nineteen. 
This experience can be given him in the public 
schools. The preliminary work for the engineer 
need not be differentiated from that given the 
skilled workmen. Both classes should receive the 
same instruction. 

If this instruction were given in all or a majority 
of city and village schools, the manual-training high 
school would relieve the technical school of the 
necessity of teaching joinery, wood turning, ele- 
mentary pattern making, forging, elementary ma- 
chine-shop work, and much of the simpler work in 
mechanical drawing. In drawing, for example, the 
graduate of the manual-training high school should 
understand orthographic and isometric projection, 

135 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

perspective, tracing and blue printing. He should 
be able to execute neat, accurate and well-lettered 
working drawings of existing machines, but he 
should not be expected to design such machines. 

Manual and mental training must ever proceed 
hand in hand ; the one is not complete without the 
other. Exactly as the arithmetic, the algebra and 
the geometry taught in the high school are prepara- 
tory to the work in higher mathematics of the tech- 
nical school, should the shop work and drawing be 
preparatory to laboratory work and machine design. 
The present duplication of equipment and conse- 
quent waste of energy can be avoided. The techni- 
cal school has its own definite and urgent problems 
to solve ; it ought not to be asked to maintain this 
preparatory work, which should be given to all 
who enter industrial pursuits, workmen as well as 
engineers. 

The American workman is intelligent and re- 
sourceful ; as a consequence he is a very efficient 
man. The United States, thanks to its material 
resources and the sturdy character of its Inhabitants, 
has forced itself into the front rank of industrial 
nations. Shall it continue in this desirable posi- 
tion? It has cherished one institution which, if 
properly utilized, will enable an affirmative answer 
to be returned to this question. This is the Ameri- 
can public-school system. By means of its efforts 
the present high grade of intelligence and efficiency 
can be maintained, but its future ideal must be 
to find the proper work for each of its students. 
The school must say emphatically that a first-class 
136 



VALUE OF MANUAL TRAINING 

machinist, a good fireman or an excellent carpenter 
is to be preferred to a second-rate lawyer, physician, 
minister or teacher. The necessity for primary, 
grammar and secondary manual training is great. 
The schools have too long given a major portion of 
their time and energy to a training which was par- 
ticularly beneficial to the professional man. The 
foundation of industrial education should be laid 
strong and well ; good work in ward and high 
schools is essential to future progress in the arts 
and sciences. 

A careful study ought to be made as to the extent 
and character of the industrial work which might 
profitably be introduced into the public-school sys- 
tem ; manual training, particularly in the ward 
schools, is still in an unsettled and experimental 
stage. The methods employed and the extent and 
character of the work given are by no means uni- 
form. The employer and employee as well as the 
educator must consider this question; out of the 
conflict of opinion good will come. Let it ever be 
remembered that competent men are needed in all 
grades of industrial work, and that the public school 
should render valuable service in supplying this 
demand. 

The manual-training work given in our public 
schools is not opposed actively by labor unions. As 
it is not the purpose of manual-training schools to 
teach trades, students are not graduated who are 
likely to become competitors, in the immediate fu- 
ture, of the men who are now In the various trades. 
The graduates of these schools need several years 

137 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

of practical experience before becoming skilled 
journeymen, although the length of the term of 
apprenticeship or probation is usually shorter than 
that required of the non-graduate. In the end, it 
is believed, a better and more efficient workman is 
developed as a result of the manual-training work. 
Labor unions do rightfully demand that the re- 
quirements for entrance into a skilled trade shall 
not be broken down by the influx of young men 
solely trained in the schools. They demand that 
the standard of skill be kept high in order that the 
standard wage received may keep up the standard 
of living. The unions do strenuously insist that 
the trade school shall not be used to neutralize the 
work of the unions. This demand is as rational 
and as just as the demands of lawyers, physicians, 
clergymen and teachers for rules and regulations 
which act as barriers against unrestricted entrance 
into those professions or trades. ''When trade 
schools limit themselves to improving the theo- 
retical, technical and practical knowledge and skill 
of those who are already entered upon a trade, 
unions seem to approve and in many cases to par- 
ticipate in conducting them." The continuation 
school in Europe is in general approved and given 
moral support by the trade unions. These schools 
aim only to give opportunity for the development 
of those who are actually at work in their chosen 
trade. Organized labor does not antagonize scien- 
tific instruction, manual training or industrial train- 
ing except in those cases where it is so given as to 
be deemed a menace to the interests of the wage 

138 



VALUE OF MANUAL TRAINING 

earners. In other words, they pursue the same 
course which any other economic class would fol- 
low under similar circumstances. In recent years 
many of the most ardent advocates of industrial 
and trade education have been men bitterly opposed, 
or unfriendly, to labor unions. This fact has natu- 
rally caused union men to look with suspicion upon 
many proposed plans for industrial training. Any 
attempt to use the public-school system to "smash" 
labor organizations is a vicious perversion of its 
true functions. 



T39 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE EDUCATIONAL AND INDUSTRIAL SIGNIFI- 
CANCE OF THE ARTS AND CRAFTS MOVEMENT 

The arts and crafts movement of to-day is a part 
of the great democratic movem.ent in education. It 
proclaims to the world that beauty, skill and educa- 
tion are for all ; that the common thing should be 
made beautiful, and the beautiful, universal. The 
importance of the movement is, however, often 
overestimated. The abuse of the machine and of 
its products by the friends of the arts and crafts 
movement is due to an imwarranted exaggeration 
of the educational and social value of hand labor, 
and to the mental construction of an ideal but 
mythical state of society which, it is asserted, 
existed prior to the development of the modern 
factory. In fact, the machine has its sphere, and 
the hand likewise its important industrial function. 
In an era dominated by the machine, a movement 
emphasizing the importance of hand work has a 
high industrial and educational value. If the ma- 
chine enables us to produce the necessities of life 
for all, it is, nevertheless, the skilled human hand 
which must adorn and beautify these products. 
The hand must find Its province where the machine 
cannot go. In its proper sphere the machine may 

140 



ARTS AND CRAFTS 

make beautiful things, and may even far excel the 
hand. It is not the use of the machine, but the 
abuse of machine production, which should be de- 
precated ; without the machine much of our present 
material comfort would be impossible. 

Art is a form of industry, and industry properly 
applied always brings forth a work of art. The 
mechanic, fashioning the accurate and splendid 
tool, produces a true work of art ; the man, forming 
with infinite care and patience the lenses of the 
great Lick telescope, brings into being another work 
of art. The automatic screw machine and the 
powerful steam engine are as certainly works of 
art as the paintings or the sculpture of the great 
masters of the Renaissance. There is, and can be, 
no real art considered entirely apart and distinct 
from industry and the industrial life of the people. 
As Emerson has said : ''Beauty must come back to 
the useful arts and the distinction between the fine 
and the useful arts be forgotten." "To give people 
pleasure," declares William Morris, "in the things 
they must perforce use, that is the great office of 
decoration ; to give people pleasure in the things 
they must perforce make, that is the other use of 
it." Art is a way of doing things and resides in 
the common as well as in the uncommon, at home 
as well as abroad, in the present as well as in the 
past. "The purpose of art," writes J. O. Adams, 
"it would seem, should be to idealize work." 

The old craftsmen were artists. They wrought 
with infinite care as much for the satisfaction of 
doing good and true work as for the money value 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

of the product. The products of the craftsman's 
skill were few, and only the ruling classes were 
privileged to possess them. The laboring masses 
were busily engaged in obtaining the bare neces- 
sities of life; no thought of comfort, art or educa- 
tion entered into their lives. The craftsman did 
unite art and industry; but the modern ccwiception 
of democracy did not exist. On the other hand, 
the modern workman is only a link in a great in- 
dustrial chain. He repeats, in a monotonous rou- 
tine, certain simple movements ; no realizing sense 
of the true social value or significance of the work 
which he performs ever comes to him. Long hours 
and routine work crush the individuality and am- 
bition out of him. 

The specialized worker necessarily has narrow 
views of life; his ability to enjoy is limited. The 
opportunity and privileges of both working and 
leisure hours are only partially utilized. It has 
been said that for a man of twenty, pleasure is 
business ; of thirty, business is business ; and of 
forty, business is pleasure. It might further be 
maintained that there is little pleasure outside of 
business for the ordinary man of forty or fifty. 
Business, the grind of daily life, has engrossed the 
entire energies of the man. Enjoyment in life 
means enjoyment of leisure and of work. The un- 
skilled laborer enjoys neither — why? His work is 
monotonous and wearing, the surroundings of home 
and workshop are not inspiring, and he has re- 
ceived no training which will aid him in finding and 
142 



ARTS AND CRAFTS 

utilizing the few opportunities for rational enjoy- 
ment which come to him. 

The present arts and crafts movement is a protest 
against and a reaction from the minute division of 
labor now employed in manufacture, and the strip- 
ping of the artistic features from industry. Arti- 
cles are made to sell more particularly than to serve 
a useful and important service. Profit, not service, 
is now the watchword of industry. Art in the 
crafts would emphasize service. The arts and 
crafts movement aims to give dignity to the worker, 
and to teach that all should be workers. The man 
of leisure is a drone and a parasite. The efficient 
service of each individual is needed by society. 
Only when all are workers and each striving to do 
his best work does society approach an ideal con- 
dition. 

The arts and crafts movement needs educated 
producers and consumers. The task is a double 
one; the workers must be trained to produce good 
work, and the taste of all consumers must be edu- 
cated so that they will demand good articles. 
Shorter hours and the right use of leisure will give 
an impetus to the demand for better qualities of 
goods ; and thus variety and handicraftsmanship 
will to some extent replace interchangeability and 
machine production. All civilized men demand the 
necessities of life — food, clothing and shelter — of a 
character not greatly dissimilar; these common re- 
quirements lend themselves readily to machine pro- 
duction. Industrial operations in which machinery 
is the chief factor are directed toward producing 

143 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

the greatest possible quantity of a uniform quality; 
therefore, as far as inventive skill will allow, the 
machine and natural forces, rather than human skill 
and energy, are employed in producing goods which 
satisfy the common needs of all men. The class 
of work in which skill is the determining factor 
aims to improve the quality rather than to increase 
the quantity produced. As the demand for the 
latter class of goods Increases, the call for skilled 
workers will also increase. 

There are indications of a revival of those in- 
dustries involving more skilful hand work. More 
interest is being manifested, throughout the coun- 
try, in art, architecture and the products of the 
various handicrafts. The Increased attention paid 
to art and drawing in our public schools is another 
indication of the coming change in the spirit and 
demands of the American people. The result of 
such training on the next generation will be great, 
and its effect cumulative on the succeeding one. 
Industries Involving artistic ability and Intricate 
manual skill are incapable of minute division of 
labor. The gain resulting from the centralization 
of industry and the division of labor is very small 
in this class of work. It is well adapted, however, 
to small factories and workshops, and forms an 
appropriate kind of industry for small villages. If 
there is to be any considerable revival of village 
Industry, it must come through an Increase in the 
demand for the products of skilled manual work. 

The use of steam and the lack of adequate rural 
transportation facilities forced the abandonment of 

144 



ARTS AND CRAFTS 

village industry and built up the existing great in- 
dustrial centers. " In recent years the increasing use 
of electricity for the distribution and application of 
power is changing the location and internal ar- 
rangement of our shops. This, together with the 
rapid growth of suburban and interurban electric 
lines, is placing the villages and rural community 
in a better condition for industrial pursuits. The 
separation of agriculture and manufacture will, as 
a result, probably be less in the future than in the 
present or the immediate past. 

Two great forces, in addition to the work of the 
school, may be discerned to be removing the ob- 
stacles in the path of the arts and crafts movement 
— the decentralizing tendency of electricity when 
used to transmit power, and the growth of the labor 
movement which demands shorter hours and better 
shop conditions. Just as the manual-training move- 
ment was a result of economic and industrial 
changes, so is the call for art in the crafts the result 
of such forces. As the machine displaces workers, 
many are pushed higher up in the industrial scale. 
Such a phenomenon must also be accompanied by 
an increased demand for the products of skilled 
workers. This movement is not something evolved 
out of the minds of a few thoughtful devotees of 
art, but is in harmony with and dependent upon the 
needs of industrial and educational life. It is an 
evolutionary movement. 

The building up of an industry involving skilled 
hand work such as the well-known Roycroft Shop 
at East Aurora, New York, is significant. This 
10 145 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

kind of industry is appropriate for small villages. 
If there is to be any considerable revival of village 
industry it must come through this class of work. 
The extended use of electrical distribution of power 
will not revolutionize the forms of industry involv- 
ing the use of much machinery and the division of 
labor, although it may modify and improve the con- 
ditions, and be of great benefit to the laborer and to 
society. One valuable feature of the revival of 
interest in the arts and crafts should be an earnest 
endeavor to keep alive particular small industries 
and to continue the special skill of each people who 
migrate to this country. This, indeed, should be 
one of the peculiar tasks which the arts and crafts 
movement should take upon itself. 

Numerous arts and crafts societies have recently 
been formed in the larger cities and in many small 
villages of the land. Many individuals may also be 
found who are working in private studios or work- 
shops. Chicago was one of the first of American 
cities to take an active interest in this movement. 
The Chicago Arts and Crafts Society, probably the 
pioneer American society of this nature, was organ- 
ized at Hull House in 1897. The Hull House 
Labor Museum was opened in 1900. The textile 
department is the most interesting and complete 
part of this institution. It was organized "for the 
purpose of exhibiting industrial processes in various 
stages of their evolution, and thus offering a sort 
of education in industrial history in the form 
in which it would be most easily comprehended, 
and at the same time emphasizing the dignity and 

146 



ARTS AND CRAFTS 

importance of labor."^ Hull House is situated in a 
portion of the city inhabited by foreigners. To the 
labor museum the foreign women come to carry on 
their various kinds of industries, — spinning, weav- 
ing, dyeing, hammock weaving, basket making, etc. 
Syracuse, New York, is a well-known center of 
this movement. The Craftsman Workshops are 
located in this city. In these shops a variety of 
work is produced such as furniture, leather work, 
needle work, metal work. These workshops are 
operated under the motto : ''We have pledged our- 
selves never to produce anything that degrades a 
man to make or sell. We have set before us ideals 
of honesty of material, solidity of construction, 
utility, and adaptability to place, and aesthetic 
effect," — an ideal worthy of John Ruskin or Wil- 
liam Morris. 

In Boston an arts and crafts high school has been 
proposed as a part of the public-school system. 
During the school year, 1903- 1904, the students of 
the Toledo University School formed an Arts and 
Crafts Society. This was continued the next school 
year, any person in the city being made eligible to 
membership. The shops of the school were thrown 
open at certain periods of the week to members of 
this society. 

In certain districts of Kentucky, Tennessee, 
Georgia and North Carolina, attempts have been 
made to revive the domestic industries of spinning, 
weaving, rag-carpet making, etc. A writer in the 

* "Revival of Handicrafts in America," Bulletin of the 
Bureau of Labor, No. 55, p. 1584. 

147 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

Bidletin of the Bureau of Labor offers the follow- 
ing justification for this effort: 'The revival of 
domestic weaving and riig-making is of economic 
importance chiefly as a means of providing employ- 
ment for persons living in rural districts and hav- 
ing little else to occupy their time and interest 
during the winter months, and also for city men 
and women who are incapable of supporting them- 
selves at more difificult occupations." The School 
of Education of the University of Chicago has 
utilized the study of the textile handicrafts in con- 
nection with its elementary school. It emphasizes 
the value of the simple handicrafts In the process 
of educating the child. Weaving has also been in- 
troduced into the schools of the city of Minneapolis. 
Very closely related to the arts and crafts move- 
ment is a movement for beautifying our towns and 
cities, resulting from the associated activity of many 
public-spirited individuals. Charles Mulford Rob- 
inson, in his book entitled The Improvement of 
Tozvns and Cities, enumerates a long list of civic 
improvement societies of various sorts, all of which 
have for their object the improvement of our 
municipal housekeeping. These societies and local 
clubs aim to improve the character and sesthetic 
quality of public property, — property which is 
owned and enjoyed collectively. Some of the 
specific objects for which these associations are 
organized are the planting of trees and shrubs in 
the public streets and boulevards, street cleaning, 
park improvement, the removal of billboards and 
artistic planning and grouping of public buildings. 

148 



ARTS AND CRAFTS 

Every improvement in a town or city which tends 
to enhance its beauty or to make it more cheerful 
and attractive tends also to better the social and 
educational conditions in that community. The 
arts and crafts societies and the various civic im- 
provement leagues are very important subsidiary 
educational agencies. 



149 



X CHAPTER IX 



ORGANIZED LABOR AND EDUCATIONAL 
PROGRESS 

One of the most important, significant and char- 
acteristic economic and industrial phenomena of re- 
cent times is the development of labor unionism. 
The rapid growth of labor organizations in numbers 
and in influence during the last two or tliree dec- 
ades has given to this movement a place of great 
importance. Modifern industrial and social condi- 
tions have prepared and fertilized the soil from 
which the present army of organized workers has 
sprung. The labor movement is part of a great 
social adjustment which is raising an important 
class in the community up to a higher economic and 
social plane of life. It is like modern educational 
advance, distinctly and positively a democratic 
movement. Labor's place in history is definitely 
marked by the institutions of slavery and serfdom. 
Only in recent generations, after repeated multipli- 
cations of the world's productive capabilities, has 
labor been given a place of theoretical equality with 
military service and professional practice ; the labor 
union aims to uphold the honor and dignity of 
labor with the hands, to give practical value to 
ethical ideals as to manual labor. Precedent and 

150 



ORGANIZED LABOR 

dominant class interests are strong forces acting 
in direct and unceasing opposition to the aims and 
ideals of the labor movement. Precedent assigns 
labor to a lower social and political plane, while 
progress with the wand of industrial efficiency ever 
points upward and onward toward release from 
ceaseless toil and social degradation. 

In uneducated primitive communities precedent 
becomes a fetish, or is crystallized into hard and 
fast law. Approximately as the rate of national 
progress or change increases does the authority of 
precedent decrease and its glamour fade away. 
Precedent — the past — has its lessons for all times, 
but it ought not to be applied unmodified to present 
conditions. Precedent represents the balance struck 
between opposing classes and interests in times and 
circumstances now forever behind us. Its unmodified 
application to to-day's problems is a blind attempt 
to substitute a former equilibrium of social forces 
for that of to-day. Education should look into the 
past in order to show, as far as possible, the condi- 
tions formerly extant. It should point out the 
forces which make for progress, and should assist 
in assigning precedent to its rightful place in the 
social order of to-day. The present is continually, 
unceasingly passing into the past, and the future is 
ever on the threshold of the present. Action to-day 
is precedent to-morrow. The dominant issue to-day 
is industrial freedom and equality, the striking 
down of precedents w^hich shackle the limbs of 
the awakening labor movement — the spirit of true 
democracy; and two great interwoven factors 
151 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

in the struggle are universal education adapted to 
the needs of all, and the institution of organized 
labor. The concept of universal education as a 
powerful economic and social engine did not rise 
to a prominent place in the social consciousness 
until organized labor became a powerful factor in 
our industrial life. The labor union has been char- 
acterized as a great Americanizing agent. Natur- 
ally it ought to be and is an efficient aid and 
complement to our educational institutions. ^<; 

''Trade unionism is the assertion of the principle 
that men have common interests, not only in their 
particular trades, but also through every department 
of life, and that it is their duty to help each other in 
difficulty, and to defend each other when in danger, 
in short, that individual advancement is good when 
it does not hurt the general welfare."^ The school 
should, and actually does, emphasize personal 
efficiency, usefulness as a producer, and economy in 
consumption. It seems that the school must neces- 
sarily lay stress upon the individual's characteristics. 
The union, on the other hand, stands for solidarity, 
for brotherhood ; if not as yet for all men, at least 
for a considerable portion of mankind. The union 
emphasizes mutual interdependence and the subor- 
dination of individual advantage for the good of 
the whole. In its ideal form it stands for the bet- 
terment of society and for the growth of altruism. 
The ethics of organized labor and the ethics of cut- 
throat competition are radically different. The 
labor union did not become a great power until 

* Dyer, Evolution of Industry, p. 99. 
152 



ORGANIZED LABOR 

competition reached an advanced stage in its de- 
velopment, until combination in many fields began 
to replace competition and the alternatives offered 
the laborer were few, until the latter came face to 
face with the difficulties in obtaining a job which 
are at present so familiar. Economic interest makes 
for combination and integration. This phenomenon 
is also visible in the world of capital, but the latter 
is impersonal ; many units can be held by one man 
as well as by more than one. Labor, on the other 
hand, is personal, and the unit is the labor power of 
an individual. Each man is the seller of his own 
individual labor power. One man cannot take unto 
himself the labor strength of many individuals. 
Notwithstanding this vital difference, units of labor 
are forced into a compact union just as many units 
of capital gravitate into one company or combina- 
tion of companies. The union man is in some re- 
spects like a share in a corporation; injure one man 
or injure one share and you injure the whole. 
Competition leads, in many cases at least, to com- 
bination, and combination brings forth a new 
ethic, a new and high code of morality in regard to 
those within the combination, and perhaps finally in 
the dim and shadowy future, let us hope, in regard 
to all mankind. 

vThe great growth in numbers and considerable 
increase in strength which has come to the labor 
union movement in recent years is due in a large 
measure to an increase in class consciousness. An 
important class-conscious wage-earning class was 
not possible at a period when nearly every worker 

153 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

expected to pass sooner or later from the position 
of employee to that of employer. In the America 
of many small competing industries and of free land 
a class-conscious body of wage-earners was prac- 
tically, but not entirely, non-existent. Trade 
unionism and class consciousness could not attain 
a strong foothold until the frontier disappeared, 
and until centralization and the systematic exploita- 
tion of natural resources and of special privileges 
were the rule. But to-day, with no frontier, with 
centralized industries, with a large decrease of em- 
ployers and managers relative to the number of 
employees, with the growth of social rigidity, the 
aspect is totally changed. Trade unionism, social- 
ism, exploitation, class conflict, now become familiar 
terms. Y 

Federation and cooperation for mutual benefit 
only become possible when the workers have time 
and opportunity to receive and assimilate the bene- 
fits of culture and education. National and interna- 
tional unions signify a higher grade of intelligence, 
and a more socialized view of life, than the older 
forms of organizations with their individualism 
and lack of mutual cooperation and aid. His- 
tory teaches that nations wax strong and power- 
ful only when they band together in compact, 
cooperating states. Isolated and mutually distrust- 
ful tribes, lacking strength and coherence, are 
pushed to the wall by the strong arm of the organ- 
ized tribe or nation. Primitive tribes frittered away 
their strength fighting each other until a stronger, 
because more closely united, people came and 

154 



ORGANIZED LABOR 

dispossessed them of their homes and heritage, and 
transformed them into a subject class or caste. 
Similar conditions obtain in regard to the laboring 
class. Individual bargaining against organized 
corporate capital is hopeless ; the individual is 
sweated exactly as the conquered tribe was ex- 
ploited. Only as the workers gradually emerge 
from their lowly estate, only as machinery makes 
possible a shorter working day and universal edu- 
cation, does the opportunity of cooperating together 
or of organizing into large units become a reality. 
When this view of cooperation, or of class 
solidarity, is accepted by a large mass of individuals, 
a still broader and more Utopian conception comes 
in sight, that of universal cooperation — a union of 
employers, employees and consumers. The idea 
emerges from the chaos of the past that the indus- 
trial world, rationally considered, is a great co- 
operative establishment for the material and social 
good of all, — not of one sect, class, race, but of all 
sects, classes and races. This idea inevitably leads 
to the dawning recognition of the fact that the 
division of mankind into superimposed and distinct 
layers called castes, or classes, is due to artificial, 
legal, political, religious or economic conventions. 
Each individual, as was previously pointed out, is 
in reality best adapted to a particular vocation ; it 
becomes, according to this concept of society, the 
duty of our schools and other educational institu- 
tions to assist each individual member of society 
to find his proper vocation. The welfare of soci- 
ety and of humanity is best advanced when all 

155 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

individuals and all nations are playing their appro- 
priate parts without social or industrial friction. 
Such a condition is merely a shadow-like ideal 
toward which humanity is slowly and falteringly 
groping its way. The labor unions seem to have 
grasped this ideal more firmly than has any other 
organization, with the possible exception of the 
church, but they necessarily fall far below the mark 
in actual practice. If labor unions are exclusive, if 
they aim at benefiting the few at the expense of the 
many, is it entirely unexpected? Mistakes certainly 
will be made; men with better opportunities and 
training are guilty of aggression and of class 
prejudices and hatreds. The mental horizon of the 
wage-earner is, as yet, perforce limited. The coun- 
terpart of the "arrogance" of wealth is too often 
found in the intolerance and slight consideration 
shown by organized workers toward their weaker, 
unorganized and often misguided brothers. How- 
ever, the brutality of a labor monopoly is certainly 
no worse than that of a capitalistic monopoly, 
although it manifests itself in a somewhat different 
and less subtile form. 

y There is no gainsaying the fact that the labor 
unions and farmers' organizations have always 
stood for high ideals and broad conceptions of 
humanity. As early as 1829 a labor paper. The 
Working Man's Advocate, demanded among other 
things no imprisonment for debt, a general bank- 
ruptcy law, no monopolies, the freedom of public 
lands, a mechanics' lien law, equal rights for women, 

156 



ORGANIZED LABOR 

no chattel or wage slavery.^ These demands were 
called "shocking" by clergymen and property own- 
ers of that time. A motto of the Knights of Labor 
reads: "An injury to one is an injury to all"; and 
the Boot and Shoe Worker's Union declared, "Each 
for all and all for each." In 1832 the New Eng- 
land Association of Farmers, Mechanics, and other 
Workingmen wished to remedy the following evil: 
"An illiberal opinion of the worth and rights of the 
laboring classes ; an unjust estimate of their moral, 
intellectual, and physical powers ; an unwise mis- 
apprehension of the effect which would result from 
the cultivation of their minds and the improvement 
of their conditions."^ The editor of the Inde- 
pendent, commenting on an article entitled, "New 
York Subways," says : "Mr. Warner establishes 
his assertion that the element in the community 
which from first to last has clearly seen the true 
public interest, has formulated it in unequivocal 
language and has battled for it in the forum of pub- 
lic opinion and in the legislature, has been the 
despised and maligned labor unions. "^v' For cen- 
turies the progress of the world has been steadily 
toward the betterment of the position of the labor- 
ing classes. As long as this movement continues 
the demands which workingmen make at any par- 
ticular time and which are then bitterly opposed 
will a few years later be generally accepted as just 
and proper by all classes in the community. As 

^ See article by the author, "The Workingmen's Party of 
New York City," Political Science Quarterly, September, 1907.. 
^Quoted by Ely, Labor Movement in America, p. 51. 
^Independent, March 9, 1905, p. 561. 
157 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

long as the uplift of this class continues, much of 
their program at any given time will represent the 
true trend of progress. The professional, agri- 
cultural and commercial classes act as a balance 
wheel and serve to check excessive or ill-timed 
demands of the working people. True progress is 
always a compromise, — a resultant of many divergent 
forces. Friends of labor unions often point with 
pardonable pride to the many now well-established 
laws and institutions which were originally sup- 
ported chiefly by workingmen ; but if we premise 
that progress is toward betterment of the workers' 
position, this result might be anticipated a priori. 

One of the most commendable and important 
demands of labor organizations, viewed from the 
standpoint of social welfare, is that for legislation 
restricting the employment of children and fixing 
the maximum number of hours per day which may 
be required of women and children. Workingmen 
and students of social and industrial questions have 
for many years keenly appreciated the evils and 
dangers which inevitably result from the employ- 
ment of immature children in factories and mines. 
If progress is to continue, each generation must 
bring into existence a new set of workers whose 
vigor, education and ability is not less than that 
of itself; this is nothing less than a fundamental 
social axiom. Every child is entitled to childhood. 
In the modern civilized world it is not necessary 
to force him to be a breadwinner at a time when 
medical science, psychology and pedagogy tell us 
he ought to be playing in the open air and bathing 
158 



ORGANIZED LABOR 

in the sunlight, or to be receiving in the school some 
of the accumulated experience of preceding genera- 
tions. All other aims and aspirations of the union 
are dependent upon keeping children from the 
numbing and deadening effects of overwork, and 
giving them reasonable opportunity for play and 
education. The breaker boy and the child in the 
cotton mill cannot be properly prepared for the 
duties and obligations which may devolve upon 
them when they have grown to manhood or 
womanhood. .^ 

Better educational facilities, shorter hours, oppor- 
tunities for better use of leisure time, depend upon 
the organization of a strong band of men .and 
women of all working classes, skilled and unskilled 
industrial workers, farmers, clerks, teachers, writers 
and others, extending into every state, city, and 
hamlet of the United States. Not less, but more, 
organization is needed. Organization, education 
and the ballot-box are the three fundamental fea- 
tures upon which progress and justice in a modern 
democracy must ultimately rest. Specific projects 
for social, economic or industrial betterment receive 
their strength and potency from these three funda- 
mental institutions. The child-labor laws of the 
northern states are enabling the southern states 
to build up parasitic industries resting upon the 
insecure foundation of child labor, child enfeeble- 
ment and ignorance. Until organized labor can 
extend its strong arm over the children of these 
states, and make its protest felt in the state legis- 
latures, the outlook is discouraging. As has often 

IS9 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

been pointed out, industrial legislation is extremely 
difficult to obtain in America because of the number 
of states which must legislate upon these subjects, 
and because it is frequently of temporary advantage 
to the manufacturers and merchants of a state if 
IsPbor legislation is ''killed," or not rigidly enforced. 
This is a new phase of the old problem of the 
"twentieth man." 

Much of the opposition to child-labor laws, fac- 
tory legislation, eight-hour laws, etc., is based, in 
most cases at least, not upon the general welfare of 
society — including all classes — but upon certain 
narrow private or class interests. The demands of 
labor are also undoubtedly especially favorable to 
certain classes in the community; but if these 
demands make for the welfare, betterment and 
prosperity of the great mass of society, they are 
worthy of attainment. If the so-called "monied 
interests" are attempting to prevent or emasculate 
child-labor legislation, tenement-house reform, pro- 
vision for better schools, the initiative and refer- 
endum, eight-hour day legislation, municipal 
ownership of public utilities, railroad-rate regula- 
tion, and other legislation which tends to reduce 
the surplus or "forced" gains now undoubtedly 
accumulating in the hands of a favored few ; if, as 
Professor Giddings believes, we are witnessing the 
decay of "republican institutions," then the hope of 
the future depends upon the education and organi- 
zation of the working people, and new blood and 
new ideals are needed at the helm. The socialists 
and many others believe that the "trading class," 
i6o 



ORGANIZED LABOR 

as Mr. Ghent calls it, has failed in its control of the 
nation, and that it must suffer others to take up its 
task. 

It is not difficult to understand the cause, or to 
trace out the source of the bitterness of the struggle 
which accompanies the gradual uplift of the lower 
classes. ''It is difficult for people to whom life is 
easy to appreciate the conditions under which others 
are compelled to struggle. This is the curse of 
success. Class judgments are always wrong, for 
each class appreciates its own positive excellences 
and the limitations of others. The reason for this 
is that one is known from within, the other from 
without.''^ Great differences in social standing, 
occupation or experience necessarily produce lack 
of sympathy and absence of mutual understanding. 
It has been said that the vexed problems of labor 
versus capital would be solved, easily and quickly, 
if the capitalist were obliged to work side by side 
and live among his employees. But humanity is 
struggling laboriously upwards toward the light. 
Over twenty years ago Professor Ely wrote : *'The 
word humanity means more to-day than at any past 
period in the history of the race. The extension 
of practical ethics has been accompanied by an 
intensive growth. The stream has deepened. Yet 
the ethical ideas of most people move chiefly along 
horizontal lines, and do not extend up or down to 
those above or below them in rank or position. 
Social lines are considered ethical lines."^ As labor 

^ Griggs, The New Humanism, p. 194. 
^ Ely, Labor Movement in America, p. 312. 
II 161 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

organizations become more and more inclusive 
these lines are pushed farther and farther apart. 
The skilled and the unskilled are joining hands, 
and teachers, public employees and other profes- 
sional and semi-professional workers are being 
gradually drawn into the union fold. More and 
more inclusive organization tends finally to trans- 
form class antagonism into race solidarity. 

The labor union was originally a mere fighting 
organization. It was obliged to struggle for a right 
to exist as an organization. Its early endeavors 
were chiefly negative, but in recent years a positive 
program is being prepared. Many labor unions in 
this country are emerging from the fighting, 
destructive stage into an era of constructive work. 
To-day, with a large and rapidly increasing mem- 
bership, the strength of organized labor is sufficient 
to make it the most potent factor in the movement 
for the betterment of the masses.? The possible 
social and industrial value of our public-school sys- 
tem is beginning to be recognized by labor unions 
and farmers' organizations as never before. The 
free public school appears when and where suffrage 
is practically universal, when and where the work- 
ingman has political power.^ Free public education 
for all children is, however, of little value to the 
mass of the people unless child labor is suppressed, 
unless reasonable factory legislation is secured, and 
unless a short working day is obtained for all 

^Educational Advance and Industrial Progress in the 
United States, 1820-1850, by the author, published as a 
Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, April, 1908. 

162 



ORGANIZED LABOR 

workers. After the public school became an estab- 
lished institution the next step was to obtain legis- 
lation which would enable all to receive some of the 
benefits. The unions of the decades immediately 
following the close of the Civil War actively urged 
laws providing for an eight-hour day, the abolition 
of child labor and compulsory education. 

The National Labor Union, organized in 1866, 
stated "that the first and grand desideratum of the 
hour, ... is the enactment of a law whereby eight 
hours shall constitute a day's work in every State 
of the American Union." This union recommended 
among other things the establishment of working- 
men's lyceums and reading rooms, and the estab- 
lishment of newspapers devoted to the interests of 
the industrial masses. The preamble of the con- 
stitution of the Knights of Labor asked for ''the 
prohibition by law of the employment of children 
under fifteen years of age, the compulsory attend- 
ance at school for at least ten months in the year 
of all children between the ages of seven and fifteen 
years, and the furnishing at the expense of the 
State of free text-books." The original platform 
of the American Federation of Labor, adopted in 
1881, contained clauses demanding compulsory edu- 
cation, prohibition of employment of children under 
fourteen years of age, and the enforcement of the 
United States eight-hour law. y 

Some of the more recent union utterances indi- 
cate a tendency to make more specific demands 
for education. The Massachusetts State Branch of 
the American Federation of Labor, 1902, asked for 

163 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

shorter hours, "not only because by so doing you 
create work for more, but it also furnishes the 
opportunity for improved education, and with it 
improved conditions of labor." The preamble of 
the constitution of the American Labor Union, 
adopted in 1898, demanded ''the education of all 
children up to the age of eighteen years, and state 
and municipal aid for books, clothing, and food." 
The Amalgamated Association of Street and Elec- 
tric Railroad Employees of America wish *'to estab- 
lish schools of instruction and examination for 
imparting a practical knowledge of modern and 
improved methods and systems of transportation 
and trade matters generally." The International 
Union of Steam Engineers conducts a regular 
course of lectures in the winter in order "to educate 
our men in all the latest electrical and mechanical 
devices." The organized laundry workers of the 
city of Chicago arranged a course of lectures for 
the winter of 1904-1905. Many of these lectures 
were given in the public-school buildings. 

The labor unions believe in a "practical educa- 
tion." Perhaps the following extract from the 
writings of a partizan of organized labor furnishes 
a good illustration of its position. "Labor organ- 
izers were among the first to advocate the kinder- 
garten and the school of technology, long before 
both became the popular institutions which they are 
to-day. Unions have not up to the present time 
[1901] favored 'manual' training schools or *trade' 
schools, because there has been good reason to 
believe that these schools would not be managed 

164 



ORGANIZED LABOR 

by efficient teachers or be of any practical value to 
the industrial world. Workingmen have always 
championed the practical, as against the academic, 
in matters of education ; and thus, because they have 
opposed the projects of theorists, have sometimes 
been unjustly abused as obstructionists."^ Trade 
schools have been especially feared because of the 
possibility of utilizing their graduates to break 
down apprenticeship rules, and to disrupt union 
organization. It seems reasonable, however, to 
assert that in recent years the direct and immediate 
initiative for specific betterment in education comes 
first from educators and students of social and in- 
dustrial questions ; but the force which makes their 
demands effective, which causes them to be intro- 
duced on a large scale, is the influence of the leaders 
of that class which will be most directly and vitally 
affected by the particular educational advance.- 
And at the bottom, concealed from the casual 
observer, is the prime moving force — economic and 
social conditions. The strength of the labor move- 
ment is now needed to actively work for, and thus 
to accelerate, the improvement of the school system 
as it now exists in the United States, and to aid in 
making that system a more potent factor in the 
betterment of the masses. 

* Casson, Organised Self -Help, p. 202. 

" See "Humanitarianism, Past and Present," by the author, 
International Journal of Ethics, October, 1906. 



165 



PART II 

ACTUAL OR PROPOSED 

ADDITIONS TO THE 
EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 



CHAPTER X 

INDUSTRIAL AND TRADE EDUCATION 

The Kindergarten Movement 
The kindergarten movement is particularly im.- 
portant because it was really the opening wedge 
of the great movement which is now lifting our 
educational system to a higher and broader plane 
of usefulness, — usefulness for all classes and ages 
of students. At about the same time that the 
kindergarten was winning a place in our edu- 
cational system, drawing began to obtain a foot- 
hold in the schools. The idea that the schools 
could and should develop the ability to use hand 
and eye now gradually began to impress itself 
upon the minds of many of our more progressive 
educators. The kindergarten and drawing are the 
forerunners of the manual-training movement of 
the decade 1880- 1890. The former were the first 
definite indications of the growth of a belief that 
the school owed the child any other duty than that 
of mere intellectual training and memory drill. 
The kindergarten was the first step toward the con- 
ception that the school must, under modern condi- 
tions, absorb certain functions formerly performed 
by the home, that education ought to become a 
powerful factor in molding the social and industrial 

169 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

progress and life of a people, and that play was a 
necessary and vital factor in the education of each 
and every child. These conceptions were at that 
time radical in their nature. 

The father of the kindergarten movement, Fried- 
rich Froebel, established the first kindergarten in 
Germany in 1840. About thirty years later the 
first kindergarten in the United States was opened 
in Boston. According to Miss Susan E. Blow, one 
of the pioneers of the kindergarten movement, "The 
history of the kindergarten in America is the record 
of four sharply defined movements : the pioneer 
movement, whose point of departure was the city 
of Boston; the philanthropic movement, whose ini- 
tial effort was made in the village of Florence, 
Massachusetts, and whose greatest triumphs have 
been achieved in San Francisco ; the national move- 
ment, which emanated from St. Louis ; and the great 
maternal movement, which, radiating from Chicago, 
is now spreading through the United States." The 
kindergarten movement owes its visible inception 
to the initiative and efforts of private individuals. 
This will also be found true of the manual-training 
movement, the playground movement, the vacation 
school, the trade school, the correspondence school 
and other educational innovations. Private indi- 
viduals must first demonstrate the worth of the new 
educational principle, and later the classes in the 
community most interested in the particular move- 
ment force the public authorities to add this to the 
work of the school. 

170 



INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

Manual Training 
The well-known educational reformer, Pestalozzi, 
may be called the founder of industrial train- 
ing. His famous school at Neuhof was an indus- 
trial school for poor children. Here he substituted 
the study of things for that of their symbols. 
To Finland belongs the honor of first recog- 
nizing the pedagogical value of manual train- 
ing. It was introduced into that country by 
Cygnaeus, and in 1866 was made obligatory in 
all primary and normal schools. At the Phila- 
delphia Exposition in 1876 the Russian industrial 
exhibit accelerated the agitation in this country 
which resulted during the following decade in the 
rapid introduction of manual training into our city 
schools. The pioneer manual-training school was 
opened in St. Louis in September, 1880. The first 
manual-training work in Boston was given three 
years later ; in 1885 the first classes in cooking were 
opened in that city. The Boston Mechanics' Arts 
High School was not opened until 1891. Chicago 
Manual Training School opened in 1884; the Scott 
Manual Training School of Toledo began its work 
in that year. Baltimore also made a beginning in 
1884. In 1885 Philadelphia started its first manual- 
training school. In 1890 thirty-seven cities of 
8,000 or more inhabitants gave instruction in 
manual training; in 1894, ninety-five; in 1896, one 
hundred and twenty-one; in 1898, one hundred and 
forty-six; in 1900, one hundred and sixty-nine; in 
1902, two hundred and seventy. 

171 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

Manual training in the United States was first 
developed in the high school, and has been grad- 
ually working down through the grades toward the 
kindergarten. In many cities it has at last joined 
hands with the latter, and a continuous system of 
manual training extends from the kindergarten to 
the end of the high school. Manual training in the 
grades below the high school is more important and 
desirable than high-school manual-training work, 
for two reasons : it reaches a much larger number 
of pupils, and at a time when training of hand and 
eye should properly begin. Too little time is how- 
ever ordinarily allowed for this work in the grades. 
Two or three hours per week are an insufficient 
amount of time. Alore stress should be laid upon 
this important part of elementary-school work. 
Laboratory and shop methods rather than library 
methods ought to predominate in our elementary 
schoolSo The young particularly need to find oppor- 
tunity for expression. Impressions given an ele- 
mentary-school boy or girl by text-books or through 
talks by teachers are of greatly reduced value 
unless supplemented by opportunity for expression. 
Accuracy and regularity are lessons which well- 
chosen manual training teaches. Culture, good 
habits, accurate and sound judgment, and ability 
to do are not imposed solely from without, but are 
a development of what is within the child. Sta- 
tistics issued by the Bureau of Education show 
conclusively the great need of expansion of the ele- 
mentary-school manual training. While high-school 
manual-training work may not be desirable or 

172 



INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

equally valuable for all students, and perhaps ought 
not to be required of all, provided elementary-school 
manual training is required of all students, psy- 
chological and physiological considerations indicate 
that this work should be given to every child in the 
elementary schools. 

The general purposes of a course in primary- 
school manual training, viewed from the peda- 
gogical standpoint, have be^n well stated as follows : 
*'(i) Storing the mind with true conceptions of 
forms and colors and developing the ability to 
acquire new concepts; (2) developing the ability- to 
select from masses of materials that which is appro- 
priate for specified or desired purposes; (3) direct- 
ing the attention to the essential elements of the 
beautiful in nature and in art, neglecting in such 
attention the accidental, thus developing the begin- 
ning of an artistic standard; (4) training the hand 
to use, shape and arrange material with neatness, 
accuracy and taste, that the learner may express 
artistically, i.e. with truth and beauty; (5) teach- 
ing the use of tools adapted to the age and strength 
of the child and to the character of materials 
employed." The instruction in drawing, although 
usually differentiated from that of manual training, 
is essentially a part of that work. Drawing should 
naturally proceed from the full arm and body move- 
ments of the lower grades to the more accurate and 
more confined movements of the seventh and eighth 
grades. The mistake of requiring small and accu- 
rate drawing from the children in the lower grades 
should be avoided. The avisability of teaching 

173 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

writing to children under ten years of age has been 
seriously questioned on the ground that children 
under that age ought not to be confined to such 
delicate and accurate movements as are required 
in writing. 

Domestic Science or Household Economics 
Domestic science in the public schools is a special- 
ized form of manual training. Separate instruction 
for the girls usually begins with the seventh grade. 
In the college, household economics is a form of 
technical training. In the Toledo University School 
the amount of time devoted by the girls to domestic 
science is one and one-half hours per day. The 
course is practically as follows : First year, plain 
sewing and free-hand drawing or clay modeling. 
Second year, cooking and free-hand drawing, clay 
modeling or wood carving. Third year, dressmak- 
ing and free-hand drawing, clay modeling or wood 
carving. Fourth year, first semester, advanced 
cooking or dressmaking and free-hand drawing, 
clay modeling or wood carving; second semester ^ 
millinery and free-hand drawing, wood carving or 
clay modeling. In the free-hand drawing depart- 
ment special attention is given to house decoration 
and furnishing. In the cooking department con- 
siderable time is devoted to the selection of foods, 
food values, house sanitation and allied topics. 
Special classes are arranged for adults. Courses in 
domestic science are now found in the curricula of 
many institutions of college grade, particularly in 
the state universities and state agricultural colleges. 

174 



INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

Pratt Institute and Teachers College (Columbia) 
conduct courses in domestic science. In the depart- 
ment of home economics at the University of Wis- 
consin among the courses offered are the following : 
House sanitation, house decoration, selection and 
preparation of foods, the teaching of domestic 
science, household economy, dietetics, home eco- 
nomics. One professor and one instructor are in 
charge of the work. 

A very comprehensive and commendable tentative 
program for the teaching of household arts in the 
elementary schools was presented by a committee 
to the Lake Placid Conference on Home Economics 
in 1 901 The following is an abbreviated outline 
of that program : First and second grades: Mats 
and baskets of raffia. Simple gifts. Weave small 
baskets. Grind and parch corn. Make cakes of 
cornmeal. Cook fruits and roots. Study primitive 
life. Nature study. Third grade: Make banners 
and tents for knights and sails for ships. Make 
useful articles for the home, such as cheese-cloth 
dusters, dish towels, etc. Advise home work. 
Make table cloths, bed spreads, etc., for a model of 
house. Study linen and silk. Make plain bread. 
Cook a few cereals. Talk about proper mastication. 
Cleanse utensils. Dust room and desk. Study 
decoration of model of house. Study age of 
chivalry and age of adventure. Talk about dirt, 
and animal and vegetable life. Fourth grade: 
Further study of furnishing and construction of 
model of house. Simple sewing. Making of beds. 
Filter and boil water. Talk about water. Cleanse 

175 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

glassware, woodwork and paint. Study life in 
early settlements. Fifth grade: Ventilation and 
heating of schoolroom. Ventilation and sunlight 
in model of house. Disposal of household wastes. 
Sweeping and dusting. Continue sewing and bas- 
ketry. Study of air and heat. Sixth grade: Sew- 
ing. Darning. Patching. Buttonholes. Discussion 
of clothing. Seventh grade: More advanced sew- 
ing,, — aprons, skirts, etc. Study leading textile 
industries. Economic planning and cutting of 
materials. Price, quality, etc., of materials. Cook- 
ing. Study of stoves. Make fire. Toast bread. 
Bake and stew apples, etc. Study utensils. Care 
of refrigerators. Clean stoves and sinks. Laundry 
towels, etc. Study artificial lighting. Care of eyes 
and sight. Eighth grade: Food materials, where 
produced, etc. Action of heat, cold, fermentation, 
etc. Study effect of high and low temperature 
processes on starch, vegetable fibres, albuminoids, 
gelatine, fat, etc., as shown in the cooking of differ- 
ent articles. Home management. Personal and 
household accounts. Weighing and measuring. 
Plan simple meals. Practice setting and waiting 
on table. Simple principles of balance of food. 
Simple dishes for the sick. Care of dining room. 
Talks on marketing. 

Such a course, if adopted, would offer fine oppor- 
tunities for correlating nature study, science, in- 
dustrial evolution, history, geography, arithmetic, 
simple lessons in hygiene and sanitation, and manual 
training. It affords a rational way of arousing and 
retaining the interest of the pupil and of combining 
176 



INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

the cultural and practical In an indissoluble union. 
The demand which such a course makes upon 
teachers is not small, and shows clearly the necessity 
of thorough training, — a training of a somewhat 
different nature than that which is usually given in 
the typical normal school of to-day. 

Mrs. Linda Hull Larned, sometime president of 
the National Household Economic Association, 
draws a distinction between the character of the 
work in the elementary schools and in the high 
school or the college. "In the elementary schools 
this subject is called domestic science, but when it 
reaches the high school or college, or enters the 
woman's study club, it is household economics, 
because it then embraces all the 'ologies' and 'isms' 
which have to do with human life, as well as those 
sentiments and emotions which cluster about the 
home. In this higher sense then it is not only the 
science of housewifery practically applied, but it is 
the esthetics of home building and the ethics of 
home making." This is the comprehensive view 
held by the enthusiastic friends of domestic science. 
Mrs. Larned presents an outline for an advanced 
course of study. The chief topics considered are 
food, shelter, clothing, physical hygiene, municipal 
housekeeping, household expenditures, home handi- 
craft, household management, and miscellaneous 
topics. The topic shelter is, for example, sub- 
divided as follows: situation and structure of 
house ; the sanitary cellar ; the disposal of waste ; 
investigation of modern methods of lighting, heat- 
ing, plumbing and ventilation; decoration and 
12 177 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

furnishing from the standpoint of utility, health 
and beauty; usefulness or uselessness of modern 
appliances and equipments ; care and preservation 
of household furnishings and utensils. 

From an industrial and economic point of view 
instruction in domestic science is certainly as 
important as instruction in any other form of indus- 
trial training. The introduction of domestic science 
into the public-school curriculum, the scientific study 
of food values and of sanitary science, the wider 
outlook and the broader training of women, are 
very hopeful signs which are now well defined upon 
the horizon of the American educational world. 
"Undoubtedly, the first thing to be taught in any 
school is the science of health, the value of healthy 
homes, of pure air and water, proper clothing, 
physical exercise, and, above all, what foods are 
necessary for a healthy existence, and the proper 
methods of cooking these foods." *Tood is the 
point on which turns the whole problem of democ- 
racy." Good health is essential to the welfare and 
happiness of each individual, but it can be obtained 
and preserved only by the fulfillment of certain 
elemental conditions. Proper quantity and quality 
of food and drink, reasonable cleanliness of person 
and environment, pure air both day and night, deep 
breathing, work and rest, are some of the essentials 
which must obtain if good health and good citizen- 
ship are to be expected. Ignorance of the elemental 
requirements for good health is the root of many 
evils. The saloon, the drug store, patent medicines, 
the enormous number of physicians, and the high 

178 



INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

rate of infant mortality may all be laid primarily 
to ignorance and blind adherence to tradition. 
Education can best combat these evils through 
instruction of the female sex in domestic science. 

Although so much may be said in its favor, 
domestic science still, as a rule, occupies a sub- 
ordinate place in our school curriculum; and when 
it is given an important place, in many cases too 
much attention is paid to expensive dishes and 
methods of serving, and to the furnishing of large 
and costly dwellings. More stress should be laid 
upon the simple, but good and healthful. The 
details of household expenditures should be studied, 
and students should be taught economy in buying 
and in the utilization of goods for household con- 
sumption. Teachers need a larger knowledge of 
the home conditions and environment of the pupils. 
The curriculum and the methods employed ought, 
of course, to be adapted to the needs and circum- 
stances of the pupils. Until this is recognized by 
all teachers the work in domestic science will not 
reach its highest efficiency. 

In conclusion, the following quotation from a 
daily newspaper may not be amiss. ''Domestic 
science is by far the most important of all sciences. 
It is also the oldest of them all. It means the science 
of cooking, of eating, of cleansing, of sleeping, — 
of living. Unless people do these things correctly 
they will fall sick. And when they are sick they 
become unhappy and thus make those around them 
unhappy. . . . The chief obstacle in the path of 
domestic science has always been lack of cooperation 

179 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

between students. The knowledge gained by the 
painful and mortifying experience of one woman is 
not shared by her with her sisters. They, too, have 
to' go through the same disagreeable experiences to 
find out the same things. If there was a common 
fund of knowledge into which all new discoveries 
might be put, and from which any woman might 
draw the accumulated experience of centuries and 
apply it to her own present dilemma, much needless 
toil would be saved." To conserve this knowledge, 
to add to it, and to disseminate it are the chief 
functions of the more advanced work in domestic 
science or home economics. 

The Trade School 
Under this heading schools will be discussed 
which have for their chief aim the teaching of 
some mechanical trade and the preparation of 
their students for a place in the ranks of skilled 
workers. The friends of the trade school believe 
that the apprenticeship system is no longer use- 
ful in training skilled workers; they firmly believe 
that the duty of training such artisans must here- 
after devolve upon the school. In its simplest 
form the trade school merely tries to perform the 
duties of the old apprenticeship system. The 
student spends nearly all of his time in the work- 
shop. Skill in some craft is the sole end and aim ; 
this sharply differentiates it from the manual-train- 
ing school. However, some of the more recently 
established trade schools are lengthening the time 
of instruction and aiming to give their graduates a 



INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

broader training, — something more than a purely 
technical training. 

The New York Trade School is the oldest and 
perhaps the best representative of the original type 
of trade school. This school is said to be the largest 
and best-equipped trade school in the United States. 
It was founded in 1881 by Col. R. T. Auchmuty. 
The cost of land, buildings and equipment was 
about $300,000, and the cost of maintenance is about 
$33,000 per year. Both day and evening classes are 
maintained. The school year is six months in 
length. The day classes meet six days per week, 
and the evening classes two to four times each 
week. The method of instruction was originated 
by Col. Auchmuty. "At first the student is put on 
work that is simple, but as skill and workmanlike 
use of tools are acquired he is advanced to work 
that is more difficult and complicated until he is 
made familiar with the various branches of his 
trade." Emphasis is laid upon actual practice, and 
very little attention is paid to theoretical or scientific 
training. The instructors are skilled mechanics. 

The Wilmerding School of Industrial Arts of San 
Francisco, California, is a good example of the 
later type of the trade school. Mr. J. C. Wilmer- 
ding bequeathed the sum of $400,000 to establish 
and maintain a school *'to teach boys trades, fitting 
them to make a living with their hands with little 
study and plenty of work." This school was opened 
in 1899 and has well-equipped shops. The latest 
and best shop appliances are used. It devotes its 
attention chiefly to the building trades, while the 

181 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

California School of Mechanical Art in the same 
city turns its attention to the machinery trades. 
In addition to the practical work the Wilmerding 
School gives instruction in drawing, mathematics, 
English, business forms, geography, history and 
civics. "It is intended that the graduates of the 
school shall be well-instructed workmen in the 
trades which they select, and intelligent citizens." 
A four-years' course is given. No tuition is 
charged. Any boy is admitted who has completed 
the work given in the ward schools. The instruct- 
ors in the academic departments are college grad- 
uates and the shop instructors are skilled artisans. 
By contrasting these two schools we see that much 
progress has been made in regard to the methods, 
aims and purpose of trade education. The Wil- 
merding School recognizes that the workingman 
is to be a citizen as well as an artisan. It empha- 
sizes the necessity for a broader and more thorough 
training than can be given by means of a short, 
purely practical course of instruction. The best 
bricklayer is not the one who merely knows how 
to lay the wall and mix the mortar, but the one 
who adds to this an understanding of the require- 
ments of citizenship in a democratic country. 

In New England and the South many textile 
schools are found. This form of trade school is a 
comparatively recent departure. In 1895 Massachu- 
setts passed an act authorizing the granting of state 
aid for the establishment of such schools, to the 
extent of $25,000, provided the municipality would 
grant an equal sum. The provisions of this act 

182 



INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

were limited to cities having at least 450,000 
spindles. Under this act the Lowell, New Bedford 
and Fall River textile schools were organized. In 
the South there are textile departments in Clemson 
College, the North Carolina College of Agriculture 
and Mechanical Arts, the Georgia School of Tech- 
nology and the Mississippi Agricultural and 
Mechanical College. The typical course is three 
years in length, with courses in cotton manufacture, 
wool manufacture, designing, chemistry, dyeing and 
weaving. 

The tendency of trade and textile schools is 
toward higher entrance requirements and broader 
curricula. The textile instruction in the Georgia 
School of Technology is dignified by the name of 
textile engineering, and is made coordinate with the 
other branches of engineering, — civil, mechanical 
and electrical. The graduates in textile engineering 
receive the degree of bachelor of science. On the 
other hand, the technical school, while not reduc- 
ing its requirements, is trying to adhere more closely 
to the practical demands of the engineering and 
industrial world. This may finally bring it to pass 
that the distinction between trade and technical 
education will become one of degree rather than of 
kind. As manual training has forced its way into 
the public-school curriculum, and as technical edu- 
cation is now provided by state colleges of agricul- 
ture and mechanical arts, so finally will a broad 
preparation for the skilled trades find a place in 
our scheme of public education. 

183 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

"Self-Supporting" or Half-Time Schools 
The attempt to closely unite education and labor 
has brought forth a kind of school which has at dif- 
ferent periods been called *'manual-labor," "half- 
time" or ''people's industrial" schools. In the earlier 
forms the method employed or proposed was simple. 
The student was furnished with work in a shop or 
on a farm. One half of his time was devoted to prac- 
tical work, thus enabling him to pay his expenses; 
the other portion of his time was utilized in study. 
The "manual-labor" schools organized in New York 
State, in the period 1825- 1850, were of this char- 
acter. The Oneida Institute was one of the first 
established. All of these attempts soon resulted in 
failure. A manual-labor department was estab- 
lislied early in the history of Oberlin College. 
According to a circular issued by the institution, 
manual labor was considered indispensable to a 
complete education and necessary for the preserva- 
tion of the student's health. Saw mills, grist mills 
and other establishments were operated upon a 
commercial basis; but eventually the enterprises 
proved to be failures. Professor Commons observes : 
"Not even the most enthusiastic modern advocate 
of manual-training schools as a solution of the edu- 
cational problem could have set forth more glow- 
ingly the advantages of this system." All were 
required to work, rich and poor alike, because it 
gave the student exercise while defraying his 
expenses, because it aided in forming habits of 
frugality and of industry, because it furnished an 
acquaintance with the common things of life, and 

184 



INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

because it met the wants of man as a compound 
being. The more recent proposal of Mr. M. P. 
Higgins is a sort of modern revival of this older 
idea. He proposes to join a well-equipped machine 
shop, operated on a commercial basis, with the 
ordinary technical school. The students would work 
one half of the time in the shop under practical shop 
conditions and discipHne. Expert machinists would 
be employed to oversee the work. Mr. Higgins 
believes that in this manner all the benefits of the 
best form of apprenticeship would be retained, and, 
at the same time, thorough scientific and technical 
instruction would be given to the workers. The 
"self-supporting" school is diametrically opposed to 
the traditional monastic ideal of the college. It 
reverses the Aristotelian dogma that leisure is 
necessary for education and culture, and proclaims 
that only through work and activity is a person 
enabled to achieve true education and culture in 
modern society. 

Correspondence Instruction 
The almost phenomenal development of corre- 
spondence instruction is a fact to which the educator 
should give thoughtful attention. Correspondence 
instruction is now offered in almost every con- 
ceivable branch of knowledge, — law, journalism, 
art, languages, science, drafting, engineering, 
physics, domestic science, music and nursing are a 
few of the many subjects which different institu- 
tions claim to teach by mail. The kind of "schools" 
giving correspondence instruction vary from the 

185 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

individual, at one end of the line, who aims to make 
money easily by advertising to give this instruction, 
to such large and reliable institutions as the Uni- 
versity of Chicago and the University of Wisconsin 
at the other. 

Dr. William R. Harper, the late president of the 
University of Chicago, is said to be the father of 
modern correspondence instruction in the United 
States. In 1880 he instituted a correspondence 
course in Hebrew. From 1885 to 1895 Chautauqua 
Institute employed this method to seme extent. In 
1892 the University of Chicago made correspond- 
ence instruction a feature of its university extension 
work. In the early nineties the now familiar private 
technical correspondence schools began to be 
founded. Among the chief schools of the latter 
class may be mentioned the International Corre- 
spondence Schools, Scranton, Pennsylvania; the 
American Schools of Correspondence, Boston, the 
Correspondence Department of the Armour Insti- 
tute, Chicago; and the Electrical Engineer's In- 
stitute of Correspondence Instruction, New York. 
The Scranton school, which is one of the oldest of 
its kind, recently claimed an enrollment of over 
300,000 students. The average age of students is 
about twenty-six years; and more than eighty per 
cent, know nothing of fractions when they begin. 

The questions naturally arise : What has caused 
this enormous growth of correspondence instruc- 
tion? Is it a permanent or a temporary feature of 
education? The demand for technical and practical 
instruction is due to the new industrial conditions 

186 



INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

upon which so much stress has been placed in pre- 
vious chapters. This demand has so far outrun the 
ability or the inclination of the school authorities to 
meet it that extraordinary measures must be resorted 
to. The demand existed ; the correspondence school 
arose to meet it, and to increase it as well, because 
the typical correspondence school is merely a busi- 
ness proposition. The correspondence schools have 
taken advantage of the fact that a man is always 
interested in his own occupation; they have firmly 
grasped the fact that he will study if he can be 
convinced that by so doing he will reap the reward 
of increased wages in the near future. One favorite 
motto used in advertisements is: "To earn more, 
learn more." Their advertisements usually contain 
statements from their students as to increased 
salary. These schools have been successful in 
obtaining thousands of students because they have 
given, in a simple and direct manner, what the 
pupils need, and because they have placed before 
the prospective student the direct, immediate, con- 
crete result of study in their school, namely, an 
increase in wages. They have taught the orthodox 
economic doctrine that increased efficiency leads to 
higher wages. The private correspondence school 
thrives through good advertising and soliciting, and 
because it ostensibly furnishes the "goods" which 
the people demand, — goods which are unfortunately 
as yet not adequately furnished elsewhere. 

Some private correspondence schools may be 
"fakes" ; the methods employed and the aims placed 
before the student may not be of the best ; but they 

T87 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

have a mission and some are doing a good work. 
A solicitor of one correspondence school once told 
the author that the company made its profits, as did 
old-line insurance companies, from the students who 
purchased full-course scholarships, and who soon 
dropped out. He said that he was often obliged 
to urge men to enroll who, he felt sure, would not 
profit by the work, and who would soon drop out. 
But the company looked to him for concrete results, 
and his salary depended upon the numbers enrolled. 
With the establishment of well-organized evening 
instruction in our cities and towns the demand for 
correspondence instruction will probably diminish 
or be changed in character. It may then be devoted 
chiefly to work of a higher grade, similar to that 
given in a college or technical school. In some 
form it seems probable that this kind of instruction 
is to continue; but the private, organized- for-profit 
correspondence school should be supplanted by the 
public school. One State University, Wisconsin, 
has already gone into this work on a large scale. 

The success of this new method of instruction 
also has its lesson for the student of educational 
problems. It makes it clear that when the student 
cannot go to the school or to the university, these 
must be brought to him. This lesson is already 
bearing fruit such as university extension, farmers' 
institutes, good roads object lessons and the train 
schools for farmers. The institution of learning 
of the future will not be solely devoted to the little 
band of fortunate individuals who can gather in its 
halls, but will become a center from which learning 
i88 



INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

and practical aid will be disseminated through cor- 
respondence courses, university-extension work, 
special classes, bulletins, leaflets and books to a vast 
number of toilers in classrooms, factories, offices, 
stores and on farms. The aim will be to make all 
students, wherever they may be and under whatever 
conditions they may live. Instruction ought to be 
so given as to meet the wants and fit the ability of 
the various kinds and classes of students and 
workers. The correspondence schools have fur- 
nished text-books which are far superior, for the 
use of the class of students for whom they were 
designed, to any written by the average professional 
text-book writer. The text-book ought to fit the 
student, instead of requiring the adjustment of the 
student to it. Different styles of treatment are 
necessary for the same subject. Pedagogical 
requirements must by no means be overlooked, — 
and by adopting this method they may be truly 
followed and emphasized. No hard and fast peda- 
gogical method can be applied effectively and 
economically to individuals of widely dissimilar 
home, class and professional environment. To 
furnish the proper material in the proper form to 
each individual, is the problem. The correspond- 
ence school has made progress in this direction. 

The correspondence school allows each individual 
to progress just as fast as he is able; the class 
method is avoided. There is no holding back or 
crowding ahead. On account of this feature it 
seems as if something might be done in an organ- 
ized, systematic way toward utilizing the leisure 

189 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

time of men engaged in seasonal industries, as, for 
example, the farmer's time during bad weather, 
and the mechanic's time when he is temporarily laid 
off. If suitable reading and opportunity for 
instruction by correspondence or otherwise were 
offered, and the case presented in a businesslike 
way, the disadvantages and dangers of irregularity 
of work might be partially removed. The diffi- 
culties in the road are great, but the need is also 
urgent. 

The International Correspondence School offers 
nearly half a hundred courses in technical instruc- 
tion. The following are selected from the list to 
illustrate the great variety of instruction attempted : 
shopkeepers' course, electrical engineers' course, 
telegraphy, mechanical drawing, building contrac- 
tors' course, municipal engineering, sanitary plumb- 
ing, lettering and sign painting, coal-mining course. 
A synopsis of the coal-mining course will give an 
idea of the extent of the work. This course is 
designed to fit the needs of mining engineers, miners 
and mine officials. It aims to present to the student 
every detail which is necessary to fit him for any 
position in the anthracite or bituminous fields, or to 
pass the examinations for mine foreman or state 
inspector of mines. The subjects taught in this 
course are arithmetic, geometrical drawing, geome- 
try and trigonometry, gases met with in mining, 
mine ventilation, mine surveying and mapping, 
economic geology of coal, prospecting for coal, 
locations of openings, shafts, slopes and drifts, 
methods of working coal mines, mechanics, steam 

190 



INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

and steam boilers, steam-engines, air and air com- 
pressors, hydro-mechanics and pumping, mine 
haulage, hoisting and hoisting appliances, surface 
arrangements of anthracite and bituminous mines, 
coal-cutting machinery, dynamos and motors, elec- 
tric pumping, signaling, haulage and lighting. Cer- 
tainly, this is an ambitious, comprehensive and 
practical course. Can such a course be properly 
and thoroughly given by correspondence methods? 
Undoubtedly, in the majority of cases, not as well 
as in a good night or continuation school; but the 
correspondence method reaches the student where- 
ever he may be. This is its great merit. Its 
facilities are equally at the command of all whom 
the postal service reaches. 

In recent years household economics is claiming 
a place in correspondence instruction. A corre- 
spondence school announces a "complete course in 
household economics." "This course," their cata- 
logue announces, "is intended for the home-maker, 
mother or daughter, who desires fuller knowledge 
of the subjects required to make her work more 
interesting, her management more efficient and her 
home-making more successful." Lesson papers 
will be sent to the student on the following subjects : 
chemistry of the household, household bacteriology, 
house sanitation, food and dietetics, scientific prin- 
ciples of cookery, the house, — its plan, decoration 
and care, — household management, home care of 
the sick, study of child life, care of children, textiles 
and clothing, physiology and hygiene. In the les- 
sons on the care of children, which are written by a 

191 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

professor in a well-known medical college, the 
following are the chief topics treated : the new-born 
baby, clothing, surroundings and care, development 
and growth, natural and other foods, artificial feed- 
ing, milk modification, milk and food formulae, 
general rules for feeding, food disorders, feeding 
during second year, feeding of older children, chil- 
dren's ailments. 

The Negro Industrial School 
The immigrant furnishes many complex and 
difficult industrial, social and educational problems 
for the people of the North, and the negro fills a 
similar role in the South. The Civil War and the 
former prevalence of slavery delayed industrial 
development in this important section of the country. 
During the last quarter of a century, however, a 
new industrial South has been developed. Cotton 
factories and blast furnaces are being built, and 
busy industrial villages are supplanting the old- 
fashioned towns. In the twenty years from 1880 
to 1900 the number of cotton factories increased 
about fourfold. Agricultural progress has kept 
pace with the industrial development. This rapid, 
almost unprecedented, growth has emphasized the 
need of new educational methods. The southern 
people are now awake to the necessity of technical 
and industrial training for both white and black. 
President Winston, of the North Carolina College 
of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, voices the senti- 
ment thus: "The South needs workers, trained and 
skilled workers, in every department of industry. 
192 



INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

Rude labor will not suffice, even in agriculture. 
Our cotton crop has been trebled in thirty years. 
Improvements in cultivation, in machinery, in fer- 
tilizers, and in utilization of waste products have 
produced this wonderful result. The methods of 
slavery would mean bankruptcy. Thirty years 
hence our crops will be trebled again, and the 
methods of to-day will mean bankruptcy then. 
The same is true of all our industries." In other 
sections the growth of technical and textile schools 
for the whites of the North and the South has been 
presented ; it remains for this section to point out 
the industrial position and the educational needs 
of the negro. 

**The negro now has a monopoly of the trades in 
the South, but he can't hold it unless the young 
men are taught trades in the school." This true 
prophecy was uttered by Booker T. Washington in 
1884. The census of 1900 proved conclusively, 
what common observation had led many to believe, 
namely, that the negro is fast losing his position in 
the trades. Many different reasons may be given 
for this phenomenon, such as the unreliability and 
irregularity of the negro, race antagonism, oppo- 
sition of the labor unions. Mr. Washington is still 
firm in his conviction as to the value of negro indus- 
trial education ; but some are skeptical. One writer 
states : 'Tt would be almost useless to equip a con- 
siderable number of colored men with the mechan- 
ical trades, for they could find no opportunity to 
ply them." Continuing, he argues that the negro 
is not driven out of the trades because he is 
13 193 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

unskilful; "but it is simply a case of the stronger 
element driving the weaker to the wall." The 
problem of the negro is an extreme type of the race 
problem which immigration has laid at the door of 
every large city ; and the negro himself is becoming 
a factor in the city problem. The negro population 
of the United States seems to be moving toward 
the larger cities on the one hand, and toward the 
Gulf States on the other. The negro is like a child ; 
he lacks the centuries of training in self-reliance 
and initiative which is the heritage of more fortu- 
nate races. Slavery tended to eliminate the virtues 
which modern civilization holds most dear. The 
problem here, as in the case of every race having 
a low standard of living and existing on a low 
plane of morality and economic efficiency, is that of 
a gradual improvement in those conditions. An 
abrupt, rapid transformation of the race as a whole 
cannot be anticipated. The negro is among us ; he 
cannot be removed, nor can he be excluded as are 
the Chinese. Just as long as he remains as he now 
is, will he be a menace to all higher classes of labor. 
If the race becomes fitted for a position in the 
industrial world, if its members become capable of 
being independent producers, it will find its proper 
place in the complex industrial life of to-day. As 
Professor Commons has pointed out, the funda- 
mental educational principles which apply to the 
imdeveloped races are mechanical aptitude, thrift 
and accumulation of property, and mutual self- 
help. The second of these principles may be 
difficult of realization under modern industrial con- 

194 



INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

ditions, but the first and third we may hope to 
apply. Purely intellectual training, the study of 
literature and the classics, to the exclusion of science 
and manual training, merely unfits the negro for 
any accessible and useful position in life. The evil 
effects of such training in a modern industrial coun- 
try are here exhibited in their most aggravated 
form. If manual training, domestic science and 
industrial education are extremely desirable fea- 
tures in the education of the whites, surely every 
fair-minded and unprejudiced thinker must grant 
that they are essential for this comparatively unde- 
veloped negro race. 

The negro industrial schools of the South have 
grasped the true spirit of industrial education more 
firmly than many northern schools. Such schools 
as the Hampton Institute and the Tuskegee Institute 
can teach many lessons to the educators connected 
with schools for the whites. For example, the 
principal of Hampton Institute, where negroes and 
Indians are educated together, observes : ''When 
they come into the school, we do not put them into 
books, we take them to our laboratory. For 
instance, every boy and girl is put into the chemical 
laboratory and the physical laboratory, where they 
get the first principles of these things so that they 
shall know something about air and water and soil. 
Then they begin to write about these things, and 
they begin to talk about them, and then gradually 
we introduce them to books ; but we put the doing 
of the thing first all the way through." If Hughes 
of Toronto and Dewey of Columbia are excepted, 

195 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

we shall look long and earnestly before finding 
educators of the white race who have made such 
progress in the theory of education. The Hampton 
Normal and Agricultural School was founded by a 
northern man, General S. C. Armstrong, at Hamp- 
ton, Virginia, in 1868. This institution has been 
the model for the other industrial schools for the 
colored race. Booker T. Washington has been 
greatly influenced by the ideals of the Hampton 
Institute. "The work of Hampton Institute," he 
writes, "has not only resulted in turning the atten- 
tion of the negro population to the importance of 
industrial education, but has had a marked influence 
in shaping the education of the white South in the 
same direction." 

The representative institution of to-day is the 
Tuskegee Institute, of which Booker T. Washington 
is the principal ; and a study of it will be best for 
our present purpose. It was opened in 1881, as 
the practical result of an appropriation of $2,000 
by the legislature of Alabama for the education of 
colored boys and girls. Since 1883 the state has 
allowed it an annual appropriation of $3,000; 
recently $1,500 additional has been allowed annually 
for the support of an agricultural experiment 
station. The school opened in a small church with 
an instructional force of one, and thirty pupils ; 
at present it owns about 2,500 acres of land, pos- 
sesses about half a hundred buildings, employs over 
seventy-five instructors, and gives instruction to at 
least one thousand young men and women. The 
annual cost of maintaining the institution is at least 

196 



INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

$75,000. This sum is derived from various sources, 
such as state appropriations, an endowment fund 
made up of federal land grants, and gifts and 
bequests of friends of the school, donations, and 
tuition fees from students. These fees are an 
entrance fee of $1.50, and room and board amount- 
ing to about $8 per month. Both day and night 
schools are maintained; the latter is for students 
who are too poor to pay the entrance fee and their 
board. They are given opportunities to work for 
their board and room. Those taking day work pay 
their board and devote their entire time to study, 
excepting for six work days in each month; on 
these days they are required to work. *'The use 
of intoxicating drinks and tobacco is forbidden, as 
are also dice playing and card playing. Students 
are not permitted, while in school, to take part in 
any political mass meeting or convention." The 
course of study is four years in length. In assigning 
trades to men students, the student's intelligence, 
natural ability and physical capabitities are given 
careful consideration. Both literary and trade 
instruction are given to each student. 

The following trade courses are given: agricul- 
tural courses for young men, dairying, market gar- 
dening, practical agriculture, stock raising, bee 
culture, horticulture, free-hand drawing, carpentry, 
blacksmithing, printing, wheelwrighting, harness 
making and carriage trimming, painting, plumbing 
and foundry work, machine-shop practice, shoe- 
making, brickmasonry and plastering, brickmaking, 
sawmilling, tinsmithing, tailoring, plain sewing, 

197 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

dressmaking, millinery, cooking, laundering, nurse 
training, housekeeping, mattress making and uphol- 
stering, canning, architectural and mechanical 
drawing. This mstitution is a large trade school 
of a type similar to the Wilmerding school. It 
combines theory and practice. Actual practice is 
given on the farm and in the shops. All the brick- 
work and plastering of the buildings belonging to 
the school have been done by students. Harnesses 
are made both for use at the school and for sale. 
Consequently, in many respects it is also similar to 
the school proposed by Mr. Higgins. 

Apprenticeship in the United States* 
, The apprentice working side by side with a jour- 
ne>Tnan who is skilled in all branches of the work 
of bis craft is rarely found at the present time. The 
methods employed in the modern shop have reduced 
the number of all-round men ; and, at the same time, 
have made the adequate instruction of beginners a 
burden for the journeyman. To become skilled in 
more than some simple, minute class of work, the 
learner must be transferred from journeyman to 
journeyman, from department to department, from 
machine to machine. At the moment when the 
apprentice becomes proficient in any particular class 
of work, or in the operation of some machine, he 
should be transferred to some other class of work, 
or other machine. However, the personal interests 
of the foreman, and the immediate considerations of 

^ See article by the author in Cassier's Magazine, April, 
1905. 

198 



INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

profit and of output, lead a foreman to keep a boy 
continually upon one class of work rather than to 
transfer him at the proper psychological and peda- 
gogical moment to other kinds of work. The fore- 
man is naturally more interested in the production 
of machines to-day than in the training of boys who 
are to become skilled workers at some indefinite 
future time. The apprentice, like the average 
immigrant of recent decades, is an unskilled, low- 
wage worker. The constant temptation of the 
employer, in the face of competition and the ever- 
constant demand for more profits, is to subdivide 
the work in his establishment and pass certain 
portions on to the apprentice, exactly as has been 
done in the case of the immigrant. Where this is 
accomplished or where no apprenticeship system Is 
established, the apprentice receives no adequate 
instruction ; and sooner or later the quality of work 
done in that shop inevitably deteriorates, unless 
there exist outside sources from which a supply 
of skilled workers may be drawn. Such an indus- 
tr}^ becomes parasitic. In the past Europe and the 
small shop furnished a considerable portion of the 
foremen and skilled men in our large shops. 
To-day it is believed that these sources are drying 
up, and, as a consequence, the apprenticeship ques- 
tion is now important. 

Temporary expediency is unfavorable to the 
introduction and maintenance of a thorough appren- 
ticeship system ; but when an establishment looks 
several years ahead the question assumes a totally 
different aspect. With the growth of the corporate 

199 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

method in industry, calculations for many years in 
the future become habitual ; and as a result more 
consideration is being given to the labor side of each 
industry. Apprenticeship is desirable chiefly for 
two reasons : to furnish an adequate supply of 
skilled men, and to maintain and improve the char- 
acter and efficiency of workers. Manufacturers 
cannot afford as a business proposition, all ethical 
and philanthropic considerations aside, to neglect 
suitable provisions for teaching apprentices. If the 
United States is to maintain its present high rank 
as an industrial nation provision must be made for 
a future supply of trained and skilled workers. It 
has frequently been stated that the old form of 
apprenticeship has passed out of existence; this 
statement is probably correct, but a new form of 
apprenticeship is rapidly coming into being. 

Within the last ten or twelve years two important 
private investigations have been made as to the 
prevalency of apprenticeship in the machine shops 
of this country. In the first inquiry it was found 
that 85 out of a total of 116 shops investigated — 
builders of engines and pumps, tool builders, 
railroad shops and locomotive shops, and miscel- 
laneous machinery builders — took apprentices. In 
the second inquiry it was found that 73 out of a 
total of 112 shops took apprentices. Railroad shops 
and locomotive builders are most strongly committed 
to this policy ; 22 out of 25 investigated took appren- 
tices. In the shops having the most advanced and 
commendable systems, night-school work or cor- 
respondence instruction is required of apprentices. 
200 



INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

A foreman of apprentices is also employed. It is 
his duty to see that the young men have proper 
instruction, and that they are promptly advanced 
from department to department. The Baldwin 
Locomotive Works, Philadelphia; Brown and 
Sharpe Manufacturing Company, Providence; The 
Westinghouse Company, Pittsburg; The General 
Electric Company, Schenectady ; and Hoe and Com- 
pany, New York, are among the best examples of 
firms which have established thorough apprentice- 
ship systems. 

At a recent date The Baldwin Locomotive Works 
indentured three different classes of apprentices. 
Members of the first class were not to be over 
seventeen years and three months old at the time of 
entrance. A good common-school education was 
required, and the apprentices were obliged to attend 
night school two evenings per week for the first 
three years The term of apprenticeship in this 
class was four years. The wages per hour for the 
first, second, third and fourth years were, respec- 
tively, five, seven, nme and eleven cents. At the 
completion of the four years a bonus of $125 was 
given each apprentice. Alembers of the second 
class must not be over eighteen years of age at the 
time of entrance. They must have completed an 
''advanced-grammar" or high-school course, and 
were required to attend night classes in mechanical 
drawing during the first two years. Their term of 
service was three years, at the end of which time a 
bonus of $100 was presented to each young man. 
The third class was designed for graduates of 

201 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

colleges or technical schools. No regular night 
work was required, but the members of this class 
were asked to read technical journals, and to hand 
in synopses of various articles. Members of the 
third class were indentured for only two years. 

During the year 1904 many agreements as to 
apprentices were ratified between The International 
Machinists' Association on one hand, and railroad 
companies on the other. These agreements were all 
similar. The number of apprentices to be allowed 
in any railroad shop was one to every five journey- 
men. The length of indenture was four years of 
three hundred days each. The company agreed to 
give the apprentice adequate instruction, and to 
change him at regular intervals from one job 
to another. The policy employed "is aimed to protect 
the railroad against a scarcity of skilled labor, for 
which it has a continual demand. It may be further 
serviceable in stimulating the loyalty to the company 
and protecting the esprit de coi'ps of the organiza- 
tion." An agreement between the Mason Builders' 
Association and the Bricklayers' Union of Boston 
and vicinity provides that apprentices must be able 
to read and write English, and emphasizes the 
desirability of educating the apprentice, particularly 
as to the strength and quality of materials and the 
science of construction. Both parties agreed to join 
in an eflfort to establish a school for members of the 
trade. 

From a consideration of these examples it is 
evident that successful apprenticeship involves, in 
the eyes of both employer and employee, more than 
202 



INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

mere shop training. The best apprentice is a 
student as well as a worker. In recent years there 
has also been a rapid increase in the number of laws 
regulating and restricting employment in certain 
trades, and requiring that these trades shall not be 
practised except by well-qualified persons. The 
federal government and at least three fourths of 
the states have passed statutory provisions requir- 
ing the examination and licensing of persons prac- 
tising trades other than those included in the 
so-called higher professions, such as stationary, 
locomotive and steamboat engineers, plumbers and 
gasfitters, horseshoers, barbers. These require- 
ments increase the demand for school training. 
The old principle of granting a monopoly to those 
who have attained a certain proficiency seems to be 
returning to favor. If the state is restricting and 
raising the requirements for entrance into a trade, 
it should stand ready to offer adequate opportunities 
for obtaining the requisite knowledge and training 
required by law. 



203 



CHAPTER XI 

TECHNICAL, AGRICULTURAL AND COM- 
MERCIAL EDUCATION 

Technical Education 
The United States Military Academy at West 
Point is the '^cradle" of American engineers. All 
technically educated civil engineers of the early part 
of last century came from West Point. As early 
as 1802 two civil engineers were graduated from 
that institution. All the early engineers were "civir* 
or ''military" engineers. The differentiation of 
engineering into mechanical, electrical, mining and 
chemical is a later development. The Renssalaer 
Polytechnic Institute of Troy, New York, founded 
in 1824, was the first technical school in the United 
States for the sole purpose of giving instruction in 
engineering. Laboratory work in that institution 
was originally included under the head of amuse- 
ments. The University of Michigan was the first 
state university to open an engineering department. 
This branch of the work was made equal in rank 
with that given in other departments. The Colorado 
School of Mines was the pioneer in mining 
engineering. 

204 



AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 

The passage of the land grant act of 1862 marks 
the beginning of a new era in technical and agri- 
cultural education in the United States. About 
sixty state colleges of agriculture and mechanics' 
arts have been founded under the provisions of this 
act. The last fifteen or twenty years have been 
marked by a rapid increase in the number of engi- 
neering students in the various technical schools of 
this country. In 1889, it has been estimated, there 
were 3,000 engineering students in this country; in 
1899, about 10,000; while in 1905 the total was not 
less than 20,000. If this estimate is correct, there 
was a sixfold increase in less than a score of years. 

The most interesting and significant token of 
progress is, however, found in the enrichment of 
the technical-school curriculum. Fifteen years ago 
the course of study for engineering students was 
usually limited to those subjects which directly per- 
tained to the work of an engineer ; and the concepts 
of the duties and field of an engineer were, at that 
time, very narrow. To-day the engineer is becom- 
ing a man of affairs in the broad sense of the term ; 
he is now one of the leaders and directors of modern 
industry. He is expected to be more than a mere 
technical expert. The growth in the complexity 
of modern life has been reflected in the training 
and requirements of the modern technical student. 
Many teachers of engineering are now advising stu- 
dents to take a complete college course, or at least 
two years of such work, before taking up purely 
professional studies. The necessity of a broader 
curriculum is now being generally recognized; 
205 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

coupled with this is an attempt to make the work 
and teaching of the technical school square with the 
demands of practical engineering work. This 
phenomenon merely affords further illustration of 
the effects of recent progress upon education. 

Agricultural Education 
The Agricultural College. — Agriculture, as well 
as household industry, has been called a "belated" 
industry. Many partial explanations may be given 
to account for this fact. Agriculture as a science 
is dependent upon many other more fundamental 
sciences, such as chemistry, physics and botany; it 
could not develop or reach a scientific basis until 
the latter were also placed upon a firm foundation. 
Agriculture is something near at hand, it is familiar 
to all ; scientific investigation invariably begins with 
the far off and the unusual. Again, as long as 
large quantities of free and fertile land were to be 
found upon our western frontier, there was little 
demand for increased fertility ; the economic motive, 
which prompts investigation and improves efficiency, 
was not strong. As a consequence the entire 
development of agricultural education may be said 
to have occurred during the last fifty years ; and the 
last twenty years have encompassed the major por- 
tion of that development. 

The first American agricultural college was estab- 
lished, in obedience to a provision in the state con- 
stitution, in 1857 at Lansing, Michigan. This 
pioneer institution opened with a faculty of five, 
and a student body of sixty-one. In 1859 the 

206 



AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 

Farmer's High School (now the State College) of 
Pennsylvania was opened for students. Three 
years later followed the Morrill Act, which led, as 
has been noted, to the establishment of a long list 
of state institutions furnishing instruction in scien- 
tific agriculture. To Michigan and Pennsylvania, 
however, belongs the honor of being leaders in this 
important educational movement. 

Agricultural education in the United States may 
for convenience be roughly divided into three 
divisions : First, the courses of the agricultural 
college. This agricultural college may be a separate 
institution, a department of a university, or it may 
be affiliated with a mechanical department of a 
technical school. Second, agricultural and nature 
study courses in the secondary and primary schools 
of the small towns and of the rural districts. Third, 
agricultural extension work of various kinds. 

The college is the oldest of the three forms. In 
general two kinds of college courses are given, long 
and short. The former is usually four years in 
length and leads to the degree of bachelor of 
science or bachelor of agriculture. The require- 
ments for admission and the nature of the work 
vary considerably in different institutions. The 
short courses are designed for students who can 
spend but little time in residence at the college. 
Such courses are designed to 'give a maximum of 
useful knowledge in a short period of time. 

The College of Agriculture of the University of 
Wisconsin is a good example of the best type of 
agricultural college at the present time. The aim 

207 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

of this department as stated in its catalogue is 
''First, to develop agricultural science through inves- 
tigation and experiment, and to disseminate the 
same through bulletins and reports. Second, to 
give instruction in agriculture at the college. 
Third, to disseminate agricultural knowledge among 
the farmers of the state by means of institutes and 
popular publications." The following courses are 
offered : ( i ) a graduate course for advanced 
students, original investigators and special, well- 
trained students; (2) a long course which offers 
"scientific training in agricultural chemistry, agri- 
cultural physics, horticulture, animal husbandry, 
dairying and agricultural bacteriology"; (3) a short 
course, which is of a practical nature; (4) a dairy 
course for young men who intend to operate cheese 
factories and creameries; (5) a farmers' course, 
which is designed for farmers, — men who are 
actually engaged in the industry, — this course 
covering a period of only two weeks; (6) a house- 
keepers' course, or conference for the wives and 
daughters of the farmers in the last-named course. 

The requirements for admission to the long 
course are the same as those for the College of 
Letters and Science of the university. In the short 
course the student must be at least sixteen years of 
age and have a good common-school education. 
To gain admission to the farmers' course the candi- 
date must be at least twenty-five years of age. 
According to the catalogue for the school year of 
1905-1906 the number of students in the college of 
agriculture was: long course, 136; short course, 
208 



AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 

322, of which 137 were attending for the second 
time; dairy course, 163. In the winter of 1905 
about 200 farmers were in attendance in the 
farmers' course. The criticism that the agricultural 
college educates the student for other work rather 
than for farming seems to be well taken when 
directed against the four-year college course; but 
the short course does not lead away from the farm. 
The most recent and encouraging feature of agri- 
cultural education is the development of short 
courses. The four-year course prepares the 
student for teaching, experiment-station work, or 
other scientific work, rather than for actual farming. 
This instruction is valuable, it is necessary; but 
it produces the scientist rather than the farmer. 
Agriculture is in reality an art rather than a science. 
The farmer should be considered to stand in the 
same relation to the scientist as does the skilled 
mechanic to the engineer. The farmer must utilize 
the methods which the agricultural scientist origi- 
nates as a result of his investigation, laboratory 
experiments and analysis. 

In the University of Wisconsin the short course 
covers two terms of fourteen weeks each. The first 
year's work includes lectures in feeds and feeding, 
breeds of livestock, agricultural physics, plant life, 
dairying, veterinary science ; laboratory practice in 
stock judging, agricultural physics, dairying; a 
course in farm bookkeeping; and recitation and 
drill in parliamentary practice. During the second 
year lectures are given on animal nutrition, breeds 
of livestock, agricultural physics and meteorology, 
14 209 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

horticulture and agronomy, elementary agricultural 
chemistry, veterinary science, agricultural eco- 
nomics and bacteriology; laboratory practice is 
afforded in stock judging, physics and meteorology, 
horticulture and agronomy ; and work is given at 
the forge and bench. In the dairy course lectures 
and class work are given on milk, creamery accounts 
and management, cheese making, bacteria in the 
dairy, heating and ventilating, care and mangement 
of the boiler and engine, feeding and management 
of dairy stock, breeding and selection of dairy 
stock, and parliamentary practice ; laboratory work 
is assigned in milk testing, butter making, cheese 
making and dairy machinery. 

The farmers' course is merely an improved form 
of a farmers' institute. The farmer is called to the 
university, where better instruction can be given 
him than at any other place. In the case of the 
institute the university workers go to the farmer; 
in this case the reverse happens. Two lectures 
daily are given, and the remainder of the day is 
devoted to stock and corn judging. This course 
was first mstituted at the University of Wisconsin 
in the winter of 1904. The housekeepers' confer- 
ence was first held in the winter of 1905. At this 
conference, which lasted for ten days, lectures or 
demonstration lessons were given on the food prob- 
lem of to-day, beverages, physical development, 
house sanitation, need of public-school instruction 
in domestic science, care of children, household 
bacteriology, some uses of cheese, European farm- 
houses, cereals, breads, cuts of beef, fruits and 
210 



AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 

vegetables, winter eggs, food for the sick, household 
accounts, propagation and care of house plants, the 
kitchen garden, food adulteration, water supplies, 
dangers in water and milk, raising poultry, cleanli- 
ness in the dairy. The two ten-day courses are 
tentative attempts to reach and help the adult farmer 
and his wife. If successful, these courses must be 
primarily useful and practical. The popular and 
successful lecturers should be familiar with condi- 
tions on the farm. They must be in sympathy with 
the farmer and his wife, and must take a keen 
interest in the welfare of the rural family. The 
success of a teacher is in a large measure dependent 
upon his ability to adapt his methods and materials 
to the class of students under his instruction. 

The University of Wisconsin devotes six build- 
ings to agricultural research. The farm land is 
divided into two tracts of one hundred and twenty- 
five and two hundred and twenty acres respectively. 
Four model barns have been built not far from the 
main agricultural building. The academy and 
cheese factory is placed upon a commercial basis. 
Farmers bring their milk to the dairy building. 
Butter and cheese are made; some milk is pasteur- 
ized and sold to consumers. It is intended to be a 
model creamery and cheese factory. The dairy 
department of the Iowa State College of Agricul- 
ture and Mechanic Arts is also in operation on a 
commercial basis during the entire year. Dur- 
ing the summer season from 15,000 to 25,000 
pounds of milk are daily converted into butter and 
cheese. 

211 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

Two new departments of the University of Cali- 
fornia should be mentioned at this point. A course 
has been arranged with a view to studying the 
agricultural and mechanical problems of the arid 
regions of the West. Some of the problems to be 
studied are "the construction and operation of 
canals, reservoirs and pumping plants, the dis- 
tribution of water, the social and legal problems 
connected with the ownership and administration 
of irrigating plants, the chemistry of the soil, the 
comparative needs of agricultural staples for water." 
The increased use of irrigation opens a wide field 
for the student of agricultural and mechanical prob- 
lems. The other department is designed to train 
men for the care and management of sugar-beet 
plantations and factories. 

Agriculture in the Public Schools. — Nature study, 
agricultural physics, chemistry and economics, if 
taught in the public primary and secondary schools 
to students living on the farm, should answer the 
same purpose for this class of students which 
apprenticeship and continuation schools do for the 
skilled workers in shop and factory. The ideal 
place for a school is in a rural environment ; but 
even under desirable natural conditions the results 
in the rural schools have not been encouraging in 
the past. The most obvious and natural material 
has been neglected. Inefficient and poorly paid 
teachers and ultra-conservative school directors, 
small and unsupervised schools, and an apathetic 
feeling in the community have limited the teaching 
to reading, writing, arithmetic, history, geography 

2T2 



AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 

and perhaps a few other branches. The text-book 
is too often bhndly followed. When other branches 
have been introduced the best methods have not 
always been employed. 

In past generations agriculturists have taken 
leading parts in American and English social and 
political life. The belief is firmly planted in the 
American heart that intimate relations with the soil 
are necessary for good citizenship and for the true 
development of the physical strength and the moral 
virtues of the individual members of society. The 
rural school, if its natural advantages are properly 
utilized, if centralization is practised so as to enable 
competent teachers and suitable apparatus to be 
furnished, has a fine opportunity for combining 
manual training, outdoor work, nature study, 
science and literature in a way which will enable 
the teacher to discover the capabilities and special 
ability of each student. The teacher will be able 
to instill a love for useful work, to create a love for 
nature, and to train the powers of observation. 
These qualities are the best sort of a balance-wheel 
to moderate the insane desire for wealth, power and 
profits which is a characteristic of the present era; 
or at least which was characteristic of the one which 
has just passed into history. Such a training will 
develop clear-headed and wholesome-minded men 
and women to whom the insistent advocates of the 
modern creed of service may not appeal in vain. 
Farm life, in spite of its disadvantages, and they are 
many, does offer one great advantage — variety of 
occupation. The farmer performs different tasks 

213 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

each day, and the nature of these tasks changes with 
the seasons. A knowledge of the sciences under- 
lying the art of agriculture will remove the feeling 
of drudgery and will immeasurably enhance the 
enjoyment and benefit to be derived from this 
occupation. 

A county superintendent struck the key-note in 
regard to the future of rural education when he 
asked : "Along with his [the country boy's] study 
of the kangaroo, the bamboo, and the cnckatoo, 
why not study the animals on the farm and the 
proper feeding standard for them, the care and 
composition of the soil of the farm, the improve- 
ment of the types of grains and vegetables, and the 
protection of birds beneficial to the farmer? Instead 
of all of the boy's arithmetic being devoted to prob- 
lems, more or less theoretical, on banking, stocks, 
exchange, brokerage, alligation, and partnership, 
why not some practical problems with reference to 
farm economics?" This is sensible; but do not 
forget the girl. A similar change of base should 
be made in regard to her studies. In the choice of 
educational matter and methods in the rural school 
is found one more illustration of the perversion of 
the familiar pedagogical maxim, — "from the con- 
crete to the abstract, from the known to the 
unknown" — by the old, threadbare prejudice against 
the study of the useful and the familiar. The pres- 
ent insistently demands that the shackles of the past 
be broken, and that our teachers face the future. 

The story of the soil and its formation, the work 
of the earthworm, how nitrogen is abstracted from 
214 



AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 

the air, are all marvelous, interesting, educative 
and practical. The study of wheat, oats, clover, 
weeds, the apple tree are as interesting and as dis- 
ciplinary, and certainly more useful, than the study 
of rare plants and hothouse flowers, or of the 
mythical heroes of mythology and romanticism. A 
study of the common birds and bees will arouse 
more interest, if properly presented, than a study of 
the bird of paradise or of the zebra, or of the labors 
of Hercules. A farm is truly the ''greatest of all 
laboratories," and yet we are only beginning to 
realize its possibilities. 

Dr. True of the department of agriculture divides 
secondary agricultural education into five classes : 
''(i) high schools connected with agricultural col- 
leges, as in Minnesota and Nebraska; (2) separate 
agricultural high schools endowed by the State, as 
in Wisconsin, Alabama, and California; (3) private 
agricultural schools, as in New York, New Jersey, 
Pennsylvania, and Indiana; (4) agricultural courses 
in normal schools, as in Missouri; (5) agricultural 
courses in public high schools." The first agri- 
cultural high school was organized in Minnesota. 
In that state one third of the studies given are of 
an academic nature; one third, of work in the 
sciences upon which agriculture rests, personal 
investigation by the student rather than mere book 
study being aimed at ; and one third relates to the 
practical affairs of the farm and household. The 
Minnesota high-school course covers three years of 
approximately six months each. Six months are 
therefore available for practical work upon the 

215 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

farm. It is in reality a winter continuation school, 
made practical and feasible on account of the sea- 
sonal character of farm work. The different sub- 
jects which are included in the curriculum are as 
follows: First year, music, gymnastics, English, 
drawing, farm arithmetic, agricultural botany, com- 
parative physiology, agronomy, carpentry, black- 
smithing and military drill. Second year, music, 
gymnastics, algebra, agricultural chemistry, agri- 
cultural physics, agronomy, animal husbandry, 
dairying, horticulture and military drill. Third 
year, music, gymnastics, home economy, geometry or 
civics, entomology, zoology, agricultural chemistry, 
agronomy, poultry culture, animal husbandry, dress- 
ing and curing meats, forestry, and veterinary 
science. Instead of shopwork and a portion of the 
work in agriculture, the girls are given courses in 
domestic science. The school ''offers a practical 
course of study designed to fit young men and young 
women for successful farm life, and it serves as a 
preparatory shool for the college of agriculture." 
It is estimated that nearly all the graduates 
remain upon the farm. 

In 1901 the state legislature of Wisconsin, acting 
upon the advice of State Superintendent L. D. 
Harvey, passed a law authorizing county boards of 
education to establish and maintain county schools 
of agriculture and domestic science. It was pro- 
vided that ''instruction shall be given in the elements 
of agriculture, including instruction concerning the 
soil, the plant life and the animal life of the farm. 
A system of farm accounts shall be taught. Instruc- 

216 



AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 

tion shall also be given in manual training and 
domestic economy and such other subjects as may- 
be prescribed." Each school was also required to 
have connected with it a tract of land of at least 
three acres in area. This land is utilized for 
experimentation and demonstration. Provision 
ought also to be made for older students who may 
wish to attend for short periods during the winter. 
Normal training should be carried on in connection 
with the county agricultural high schools in order 
that suitable teachers may be provided for the 
county schools, — teachers who are in sympathy with 
the movement to extend nature study and ele- 
mentary agricultural training into the elementary 
schools. Normal training is provided for in the 
Dunn County schools, located at Menomonie, Wis- 
consin. The lack of properly trained teachers is 
now one of the most serious difficulties standing 
in the way of the introduction of nature study and 
the elements of agriculture into the primary and 
secondary schools of the rural districts. Manual 
training and domestic science had to contend, and 
in fact are still contending, with the same problem ; 
but the crust of tradition and prejudice is being 
broken through, and the farmers and the manual 
workers are beginning to realize that education can 
be of concrete, practical value to them and to their 
children. If these two classes strenuously demand 
the work which they need, teachers and schools will 
be forthcoming to supply the demand. The agri- 
cultural high school and college, farmers' institutes, 
agricultural experiment stations, and the United 

217 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

States Department of Agriculture are the chief 
agencies which are now educating the farmers of 
this country as to the importance of science and 
nature study for the successful farmer of to-day 
and of the future. 

The Farmers' Institute, — Farmers' institutes — 
adult farmers' schools — are now held in practically 
all of the states. Since there is as yet no central 
organization, great diversity is found in the methods 
employed and in the form of organization. The 
total sum appropriated by all the states and terri- 
tories for this purpose was, in 1903, $187,226. The 
maximum appropriation, $20,000, was allowed by 
New York. In 1904 this total was increased to 
over $210,000. During the year ending June 30, 
1903, 3,179 institutes were held. The total number 
of daily sessions amounted to 9,570, with a total 
attendance of about 900,000. These institutes 
"have been an outgrowth or extension of the 'open' 
or 'public' meeting held by the state or local agri- 
cultural societies." 

The purpose of the farmers' institute is "to carry 
valuable agricultural information to farming people 
at their homes"; oral instruction by expert agri- 
cultural scientists is the method used. In recent 
years some attention has been given to the needs 
of the farmer's wife. One or more lectures on 
domestic science and kindred topics of interest to 
the wives are usually included in the program. In 
Illinois the plan of devoting a half-day session to 
the interests of the boys has been tried. Sometimes 
premiums are offered for the best samples of corn 
218 



AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 

grown by a boy, or for the best report upon the 
methods of growing some crop. 

The **Hysperia movement," which originated in 
Hysperia, Michigan, was an attempt to bring the 
farmers and the rural teachers together for mutual 
improvement, social enjoyment, and ''to unite the 
farmers who pay the taxes that support the schools, 
the home makers, the teachers, the pupils, into a 
cooperative work for better rural schools." The 
meetings were held on Saturday evenings during 
the winter term, in the different school buildings. 
"Programs were arranged so that the participants 
in discussions and in reading of papers were about 
equally divided between teachers and patrons." 
This plan has since been adopted in other townships 
in Michigan. Such a scheme fills the gap between 
institutes, offers opportunities for social gatherings 
in rural communities, and interests the farmers in 
the welfare and progress of rural education. To 
get the parents to come to the school building and 
to meet and discuss school affairs with the teachers 
is a long stride in advance in either urban or rural 
districts. 

The United States Department of Agriculture. — 
The first separate appropriation for agricultural 
purposes amounted to $35,000, and was made in the 
year 1854. The department was separately organ- 
ized in 1862, but did not become an executive 
department until 1889. Since that time the head 
of the department has been a member of the Cabinet. 
The duties of the department were outlined in the 
act of 1862 as follows: "To acquire and diffuse 

219 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

among the people of the United States useful infor- 
mation on subjects connected with agriculture, in 
the most general sense of the word, and to procure 
and propagate among the people new and valuable 
seeds and plants." The appropriations for the 
department, including the weather bureau, for the 
fiscal years ending June 30, 1904, 1905, 1906, 
respectively, were $5,978,160, $5,902,040, and 
$6,882,690. 

The work of the department is organized as fol- 
lows. Bureaus : weather, animal industry, plant 
industry, forestry, chemistry, soils, entomology, 
statistics ; divisions : biological survey, accounts and 
disbursements, publication, library ; offices : experi- 
ment station, public road inquiries. In these dif- 
ferent departments an immense amount of work 
is being done for the benefit of the farmer and of 
the consumer. For example, the department is 
interested in contagious diseases of animals, meat 
inspection, distribution of seeds and plants, intro- 
duction of new plants and grains, diseases of fruits 
and crops, forestry extension and management, 
investigation of foods, drugs, etc., survey of the 
soil in the United States, study of foreign markets 
and trade, work of damaging insects, agricultural 
education, problems of irrigation, good roads and a 
multitude of other important matters. Millions of 
copies of publications are issued and distributed 
annually. In affiliation with this department are 
agricultural experiment stations, aided by national 
funds and located in every state and territory. 
This department is the fountain head of a mag- 
220 



AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 

nificent, unequalled system of scientific and educa- 
tional work in agriculture. It is blazing the way, 
and a statement of its work is a propos to the topic 
of agricultural education. 

Schools of Forestry 

The movement to preserve the forests and to 
initiate economic and scientific study of forestry 
has borne fruit in the shape of the Bureau of 
Forestry and in the schools of forestry which are 
now established in connection with several univer- 
sities. The first school of this nature was estab- 
lished in 1898. At present Yale University gives a 
two-year graduate course; the number enrolled in 
1904- 1905 was about sixty. The Biltmore Forest 
School, located at Biltmore, North Carolina, has an 
undergraduate course of twelve months' duration. 
The University of Michigan, like Yale, has estab- 
lished a two-year course of graduate work leading 
to the degree of master of science in forestry. The 
Yale School grants the degree of master of forestry 
to its graduates. Harvard offers a four-year under- 
graduate course in connection with the Lawrence 
Scientific School. Undergraduate courses are also 
given in the University of Maine and the Univer- 
sity of Nebraska. A recent magazine article states 
that there are over forty institutions of learning 
in this country which offer some instruction in this 
new economic science. 

Forestry is really a form of agriculture; but the 
time which must elapse between planting and har- 
vesting is very long. This fact, coupled with the 
221 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

important and obvious social, economic and climatic 
reasons for the cultivation of forests, has made 
governmental initiative and action necessary. For- 
esters will, almost without exception, be government 
officials, so that a school of forestry is in reality 
a training school for a special kind of expert gov- 
ernment employees. From another point of view, 
forestry is a trade, and a school of forestry is a 
form of trade school. 

Commercial Education 
Trade and technical education, and instruction in 
the art and science of agriculture, deal directly with 
the production of economic goods; commercial edu- 
cation has for its function the training of those who 
distribute goods, those who transfer the goods from 
the producer to the ultimate consumer. Keeping 
pace with the development of modern industry, 
commercial operations have rapidly increased in 
intricacy and complexity of relations. As might be 
expected, the history of commercial education 
presents many phases of development similar to 
those already noted in trade, technical and agri- 
cultural education. The early commercial school 
or "college" took a very narrow and purely practical 
view of its mission; but, as time goes on, a broader 
and broader concept of the field and value of the 
business or commercial school is attained. Starting 
from individual initiative m the form of the well- 
known business college, this work is being gradually 
taken up by the public schools and by the univer- 
sities of the United States. The original schools 

222 



AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 

and nearly all of their successors down to a very 
recent date had an extremely narrow and definite 
aim These institutions grew and multiplied in 
response to the demands of business men for better 
trained clerical workers. By 1897 dissatisfaction 
with this rudimentary curriculum began to be mani- 
fest. In that year, in an address before the Federa- 
tion of Business Teachers, the following paragraph 
appears: "The training which the American com- 
mercial college gives its pupils, while good in a way, 
is extremely narrow and little more than rudi- 
mentary. It cannot be properly called business 
training; it is merely clerical training. While this 
kind of training may have satisfied the requirements 
in the past, and while there may be a certain demand 
for it in the future, I believe the time has arrived 
when the American commercial school should cease 
to be a purely clerk factory and educational repair 
shop, and should assume the duties and position 
of a real business training school. In order to do 
this it must raise the standards, broaden and deepen 
its course of study and lengthen its time require- 
ment." If we substitute the word technical for 
commercial the argument would sound very familiar 
to those interested in technical education. It is the 
old cry for broader educational foundations ; a cry 
forced from us by the pressure of economic changes. 
One of the leaders in modern commercial educa- 
tion advocates three kinds of business training to 
meet the requirements of as many classes of 
students. These classes are ''(i) those who are 
compelled to take positions at fourteen years or 

223 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

younger, who at best complete the course of the 
elementary school through the grammar school; 
(2) those who can give three or four additional 
years to training, who are able fairly to complete 
the course of the secondary school; (3) those who 
can give yet other years to higher training." This 
gentleman, Professor C. A. Herrick, advocates some 
form of day or evening continuation school, the 
commercial high school or a commercial course in a 
high school, and commercial instruction in the 
college or the university. It will again be noticed 
that these demands run parallel to those of technical 
and agricultural education. 

Another paragraph in the same article is signifi- 
cant. ''Commercial education is necessary to relieve 
business of the monotony of its routine, to raise the 
business man above the machine. If one is to rise 
above the mechanical performance of his duties in 
business, it must be by a broader study and a more 
complete understanding of the processes of busi- 
ness. German training gives to the man who goes 
into trade a markedly different attitude than is given 
to him by Anglo-Saxon education. With us the 
business man finds his livelihood in business, his 
life is elsewhere; the German finds in business a 
means of life as well as livelihood ; he loves busi- 
ness and devotes himself unreservedly to it." Con- 
sciously or unconsciously the author of the above 
paragraph touches one of the fundamental weak- 
nesses of American education In the past. It has 
taught that business or the pursuit of a trade was 
something apart and distinct from real living; that 
224 



AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 

earning a living was a necessary evil, not an essen- 
tial part in the development of men. It has created 
the false impression that life was lived in the leisure, 
not in the working, hours. This is a logical conse- 
quence of a restricted view of the province of edu- 
cation. As a result of a broader conception of 
business education, the curriculum has been enriched 
by such studies as commercial arithmetic, com- 
mercial geography, commercial history and com- 
mercial law. Business education is becoming 
broader, more scientific and systematic. 



15 225 



CHAPTER XII 
THE CONTINUATION SCHOOL 

In 1900, seven out of every eight children in this 
country which glories in its public-school system, 
did not attend school after their fifteenth birthday. 
Over eighty-seven per cent, of our future men and 
women are going forth into their life work without 
proper preparation and without adequate oppor- 
tunity to receive the benefits of education after they 
have entered the treadmill of daily life. The 
greatest national industry is the production of 
efficient, capable and well-trained men and women ; 
and yet our educational mechanism only gets a firm 
grasp upon about one in every eight individuals 
who pass their fifteenth birthday. The typical 
American child of to-day has only received the 
training ofifered by the first six or seven grades of 
our public school. The business enterprise which 
was no more efficient in its methods of shaping its 
product than is the American nation would pass 
quickly into bankruptcy. This indictment as to the 
true efficiency of our educational system is severe, 
but unfortunately true. 

The greatest educational and industrial need of 
to-day is for schools which will assist and train the 
young workers who leave school for various reasons 
226 



THE CONTINUATION SCHOOL 

at an early age. The public-school curriculum is 
adapted to the needs of the young man or young 
woman who is not obliged to commence earning his 
or her living at an early age. If, however, the young 
student is obliged to leave school to go into the 
shop, the store, or the office as soon as our com- 
pulsory education laws permit, the benefits of free 
instruction are placed out of his reach except in a 
few isolated cases. In other words, the instruction 
given in the latter portion of the public-school 
course is accessible only to him who has sufficient 
funds to enable him to remain in school until the 
end of his eighteenth year. The boy or girl who 
works must rely upon other facilities. Here is the 
great industrial army of boys and girls who are 
unable to receive anything but the rudiments of an 
education. 

There are thousands of young people in our va- 
rious private, night and correspondence schools who 
are receiving instruction in branches which are or 
ought to be found in the curriculum of the public 
school. This important class of students ought to be 
reached through the agency of our public schools. 
These young men and young women realize that they 
need the assistance of education in their daily work, 
and they are industrious ; but the public school is not 
within their reach. It is in session at precisely the 
time of day when our young workers must be earn- 
ing their daily bread. Before the shop, the office, 
or the store closes, the school door swings shut, 
except, of course, where the public night school is 
established in a permanent, systematic manner. 
227 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

By means of compulsory education laws many 
unwilling children are forced to attend school. 
They are led triumphantly to drink of knowledge, 
while this great army of workers thirst for such 
instruction as will make them better artisans and bet- 
ter citizens. Although approximately fifty per cent, 
of our skilled workmen are foreign born and foreign 
trained, we still neglect to adequately provide for the 
future. Only in recent years has this important phase 
of education attracted attention. The private, corre- 
spondence, and Young Men's Christian Association 
schools which have sprung up all over this broad 
land of ours are more or less successfully and faith- 
fully offering industrial, trade, scientific and com- 
mercial education to our ambitious workers. The 
cost of tuition in many of these schools is high, and 
the work in these, as well as in the majority of our 
public night schools, is usually not well systematized 
or organized. The training given in many of our 
night schools is fragmentary, and falls far short of 
accomplishing what it should. Systematic, well- 
organized and well-coordinated courses which are 
designed to aid actual workers are needed. How- 
ever well the private night school or the corre- 
spondence school may have answered the purpose in 
isolated cases, they are not the proper institutions 
to permanently provide for the great bodies of 
workers who need such instruction. It is the 
public, not the private, school which must perform 
this function. We should copy the good features 
of the European continuation-school system. 

228 



THE CONTINUATION SCHOOL 

It is frequently urged that these young workers, 
our future skilled artisans, desire trade and technical 
instruction. Such training is called special educa- 
tion, — a training for the few at the expense of the 
many, — and therefore it is said that such work 
should not be given a place in the public-school 
system which is supported by public taxation. An 
unprejudiced consideration of the case will, how- 
ever, reveal the fact that much of our present 
public-school instruction is really special; particu- 
larly is this true of that given in our high schools. 
This instruction is especially valuable to one who 
wishes to become a lawyer, doctor, minister or 
teacher, or to one who goes from the high school to 
the college. Even if this were not true, it could 
hardly be maintained that all taxpayers are not 
vitally interested in the industrial progress of the 
country. If it can be shown that the public-school 
system may do much to improve the knowledge, 
skill and efficiency of our future workers all the 
arguments which have been employed in regard to 
the support of schools by public taxation may also 
be used in this contention. Further, it must not be 
forgotten that the function of early public-school 
education was in a large measure utilitarian, — the 
training of ministers and teachers. It aimed, when 
prolonged beyond the three R's, to educate only 
those who did not work with their hands, — to train 
a professional class. The people of the United 
States are committed to the doctrine of free public 
education; but it should be carried to the workers 
229 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

as well as to the young men and young women of 
leisure. 

The schools are criticized on the ground that the 
teaching is not practical, and that the student enter- 
ing a shop must unlearn much that has been taught 
him — a statement that has sufficient truth in it to 
make it dangerous. One of the chief reasons for 
such conditions is found in the wide separation in 
point of time of theory and practice. An abrupt 
and complete separation of school and business is 
not desirable, but at present it can scarcely be 
avoided. The home, the shop and the school ought 
to be brought more closely into touch with each 
other. If apprentices, other young men and young 
women entering upon their life work, were given 
good opportunities to carry on school work at the 
same time, as is done in Germany and in other 
countries, we certainly should be much nearer a 
rational solution of the apprenticeship and other 
vexatious industrial questions. Public night or 
half-day schools ought to be established in every 
city and town; industry, economics and education 
should with one accord make this demand upon the 
taxpayers of the United States. Some valid and 
serious objections are urged against night-school 
work. It is often said that the young man or 
young woman who has worked hard during the day 
is not in proper physical or mental condition to carry 
the burden of night-school work. The author has, 
however, taught many night-school classes which 
seemed to utterly refute this proposition. The 
nature and duration of the daily work of the 

230 



THE CONTINUATION SCHOOL 

student, of course, enters largely into the question. 
With the general introduction of an eight- or a nine- 
hour day the force of this objection is diminished. 
The success of many night and correspondence 
schools tends to prove that night-school work can 
be made efficient, and that it is worthy of further 
development. The increase in the custom of giv- 
ing a half-holiday each week offers another oppor- 
tunity for school work. 

The possibility of utilizing a portion of Sunday 
for the purpose of instructing those who are busy 
on other days of the week is perhaps remote ; but a 
calm, unprejudiced, unbiased consideration of the 
question will disclose some good arguments in favor 
of such an innovation. In fact, many ministers 
seem to have tacitly given recognition to the value 
and desirability of secular instruction on Sunday 
by converting the evening sermon into a semi- 
popular lecture upon social, economic or political 
questions of the day. The church does not reach 
the majority of wage-earners to-day; and Sunday 
is frequently made a day of demoralization by all 
classes of people, rather than a day of improvement 
and rest. A Sunday school for workers affords a 
wholesome, elevating, profitable and desirable way 
of utilizing a few hours of each Sabbath day. It is 
at least better than many of the devices now 
employed to pass away time on that day. Indus- 
trial and economic efficiency is at the root of all 
moral improvement; if Sunday instruction will 
improve the former, it is worthy of a trial. The 
teaching of that which will improve the skill and 
231 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

broaden the view of men cannot be immoral whether 
it is done on week days or on Sunday. The expe- 
rience of Germany is not to be spurned with 
contempt; it is worthy of thought; — of calm con- 
sideration. The following quotation illustrates the 
point in a concrete manner : "The sentiment of the 
library commission [Wisconsin] favors the opening 
of the public library reading rooms on Sunday, at 
hours that do not conflict with church services. 
This is wise and humane, for otherwise those who 
most need the books, working people, could not use 
them, and would be restricted for their Sunday 
reading to the Sunday edition of the daily paper. 
Of the Wisconsin libraries which have recently 
reported to the commission, twenty-seven have 
Sunday service."^ 

As was mentioned in the discussion on the cor- 
respondence school, the idea of utilizing, through 
school work of some sort, the idle periods in a 
seasonal industry, or of providing training and 
education for men who are out of employment, is 
very attractive. If local conditions are favorable, 
continuation schools open a portion of the day as 
well as in the evening might, with profit, take up 
such work. In time employers would naturally turn 
to such schools for workmen ; and immediate, con- 
crete, economic motives would lead idle men to 
enroll in such a school. 

The continuation school is particularly valuable 
for the apprentice. The general establishment of 
such a school would go far toward solving the 

^ South Atlantic Quarterly, January, 1904. 
232 



THE CONTINUATION SCHOOL 

apprenticeship question in this country. One of 
the officials of the Baldwin Locomotive Works 
writes : ''We depend upon the various night schools 
established throughout the city [for technical 
instruction], and we pray for the establishment of 
more and better night schools, to give instruction 
for that portion of the training of the apprentices." 

These schools are favored by employers because 
the best student is one who is working as well as 
studying. There are many who are willing to 
subscribe to the statement of Thomas Davidson: 
''No one who has ever taught a class of intelligent 
breadwinners will return willingly to academic 
teaching." A boy who is not diligent is frequently 
changed into a good student by taking him from 
school for a short period of time and obliging him 
to earn his daily bread. He gets an insight into the 
affairs of the business world which teaches him that 
the school is an institution which can aid and 
benefit him. 

The public-school system as it is organized cannot 
reach the class of people who are in the greatest 
need of it. The continuation night school is to be 
the worker's high school and must be adapted to the 
needs of the working classes. A continuation school 
is not, or should not be, a trade school. Trades can 
be best taught in close connection with practical 
work. It is difficult, if not impossible, to duplicate 
in the school the commercial and competitive con- 
ditions which obtain in the shops. As has been 
mentioned, the trade school is opposed by labor 
unionists because it sends from its doors semi- 
233 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

skilled workers who tend to depress the general 
level of skill and to lower the wages in particular 
trades. The trade school is also liable to unduly 
increase the number of workers in certain trades. 
The continuation school, however, avoids these 
reasonable objections. It deals as a rule with per- 
sons who are already at work; it supplements the 
narrow training which they are daily receiving from 
their work. Education, not mere book learning, 
is the cure for many industrial evils ; but the false 
conception that the sphere of education is entirely 
distinct from the business and industrial world must 
be cast overboard. Much of the present labor 
trouble is due to adherence to outgrown educational 
ideals, the lack of proper educational facilities, and 
the absence of broad views and calm reasoning which 
are the logical results of correct educational methods. 
The recent decrease in the number of hours 
worked per day by the average wage-earner will 
enable much to be done toward giving young 
workmen better educational facilities, and makes 
the present particularly opportune for the advo- 
cacy of the continuation school. Increased leisure 
should bring more culture and more rational means 
of enjoyment. Long hours are a sure preventive 
of the educational and the economic advancement of 
workers as a class. The question of the education 
of workers in trade and industry is of national 
importance from at least two points of view. Our 
industrial and commercial supremacy depends upon 
the existence of a skilled body of wage-earners, for 
which there is to-day an increasing demand ; and the 
234 



THE CONTINUATION SCHOOL 

success of a democratic form of government rests 
upon the intelligence, integrity and economic inde- 
pendence of the great mass of its citizens. 

Local needs and local influences must always be 
considered in the adoption of a course of study for 
the continuation schools ; but in a general way an 
outline can be drawn up. The housekeeping schools 
of Belgium and the English schools for girls offer 
excellent models for the work to be given girls. 
The program should include hygiene ; care of chil- 
dren, sick and old persons ; knowledge of simple 
remedies ; principles of domestic economy ; nutritive 
value of different foods ; cooking of simple meals ; 
methods of making use of foods ''left over"; 
domestic accounts ; market value of foods ; practice 
in distinguishing freshness and quality of supplies; 
care of house and furniture ; house sanitation ; 
washing and ironing of woolen, cotton, flannel and 
linen goods ; plain sewing, mending, darning, piec- 
ing, and the determination of the cost of apparel 
made; care of yard or court; care of flowers and 
shrubs. This outline roughly indicates the character 
of the course in housekeeping which is needed in all 
of our cities, villages and rural districts. Not alone 
in continuation schools is such a program desirable, 
but in the regular work of our public schools as 
well. The general adoption of such a program 
would mean great improvement in home conditions 
throughout the United States. In addition to the 
above program girls should be admitted to courses 
in art, business training, mathematics, literature, 
and in other academic studies. All work should be 

235 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

of a practical nature and should aim to make the 
girl a better housekeeper, stenographer or factory 
employee. Cultural aims must not be overlooked, 
but, if the work is to be successful, these must be 
subordinated. Furthermore, the character and 
nationality of the students, their home and store or 
shop environment, and the ideals of the community 
in which they live, should be given due weight in 
the determination of the methods to be used in pre- 
senting the various subjects. 

The boys will require a greater amount of option. 
The boy who is employed in a machine shop may be 
used as an example. He needs training in arith- 
metic, plain geometry, applied mechanics, and per- 
haps in algebra ; mechanical and freehand drawing ; 
elementary physics and chemistry, and English, 
supplemented by lectures on travel, scientific topics, 
development of machinery, applied electricity, his- 
tory, civics, art and hygiene. By judicious treat- 
ment arithmetic, geometry, algebra and applied 
mechanics can be taught together as one subject; 
in fact, this is the proper method to be employed. 
The practical side must be ever kept uppermost in 
these schools; otherwise the interest flags and the 
attendance decreases. Problems must be given 
which might actually come into the everyday expe- 
rience of the student worker. As far as possible 
students from the same trades should be placed in 
the same class, in order that practical application 
of the fundamental mathematical and scientific 
principles may be made to a particular trade. 

No man can become a skilled worker to-day who 
2z6 



THE CONTINUATION SCHOOL 

does not understand the scientific principles under- 
lying his trade, who does not understand why cer- 
tain methods are preferable to others, who is not 
able to act upon his own initiative in cases of 
emergency. Much must be learned outside the 
shop. In other words, a trade cannot be properly 
learned without a school. The industrial value of 
school training varies with the different occupations. 
In the machine-building trades it is almost indis- 
pensable ; in some unskilled classes of work it is of 
miich less direct value. But, if a man is more than 
the machine he tends, he needs a training which will 
allow him to look beyond the narrow, almost auto- 
matic routine of his daily life. Industrial and 
scientific training will make him a better citizen, 
worker and parent. That education is best which 
lies close to the life and experience of the student. 
It should gradually unfold new ideas, present new 
phases of life and lead to a higher plane of life. 
The continuation schools should, as has been inti- 
mated, eventually become an integral part of the 
public-school system ; but at first, as has been the 
case with many other reforms, private philanthropic 
individuals must probably take the initiative. If a 
number of such schools could be established in some 
large city a concrete example would be offered to 
the thinking people of the United States, and the 
value of this work could be practically demon- 
strated. In one well-known city a fund of three 
million dollars was left a few years ago in the hands 
of trustees for the purpose of establishing a school 
or schools for industrial training in that city. • If 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

such a fund could be utilized so as to build up 
several, for example three, schools in different sec- 
tions of a city where the industrial population make 
their homes, this would afford a fine opportunity to 
work out the details of the curriculum. This sum 
is sufficient to build and equip three buildings and 
still leave a sufficient sinking fund to pay current 
expenses. Each building should become a com- 
munity center. Here clubs and societies could meet. 
The buildings ought also to be equipped with read- 
ing rooms, a gymnasium and a swimming pool. 

Until some such measures as are here proposed 
are put into actual operation, all attempts to improve 
the industrial and home conditions of our working 
classes are made under disadvantageous conditions. 
Let us go to the bottom and begin by attempting to 
purify the source. Economic conditions are the 
cause of much degradation; a large percentage of 
vice and crime is the product of low standards of 
living and unhealthy conditions. 

The fact that the continuation school for actual 
workers offers a promising field for philanthropists 
should be emphasized. It is more necessary than 
additional libraries, laboratories, or universities; 
and more practical and far-reaching than social 
settlements, associated charities, or factory "wel- 
fare" work; both employers and employees should 
unite in demanding the establishment of these 
schools. To take an active part in the movement 
for properly training the heterogeneous mass of 
young people who are growing into manhood and 
womanhood is worthy of our most earnest endeavors. 

23^ 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE TREATMENT OF THE TRUANT AND THE 
JUVENILE DELINQUENT 

The urban population of the United States is 
rapidly increasing. Year after year it becomes 
more and more necessary for us, as a people, to 
learn to live and thrive in the crowded city. The 
rural districts cannot much longer serve as the 
feeder for the city. If in the future there cannot 
be produced in the American city men and women 
who are strong and efficient intellectually, physically 
and morally, American civilization is imperiled. 
Yet in the crowded schools of our large cities the 
problem of the truant and delinquent or so-called 
"incorrigible" child has assumed serious propor- 
tions. The solution is difficult ; but the demand for 
it is imperative. The modern city with its crowded 
quarters seems to increase the number of children 
of this class; our cities are indeed the breeding 
places of criminals and paupers. In the thickly 
settled districts of all our important cities children 
are growing to manhood and womanhood who are 
improperly nourished, whose home surroundings are 
bad, who are given little or no opportunity to learn 
habits of industry or regularity, — in short, who are 
almost of necessity destined to a Hfe of inefficiency, 
239 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

ill-health and moral peril. Statistics indicate that 
the number of juvenile criminals is largest, rela- 
tively to the total population, where the greatest 
urban and manufacturing centers are located. The 
same is true of almshouse paupers. 

In order to become better acquainted with the 
characteristics of the juvenile delinquent let us 
study a composite picture which has been painted by 
one who understands him. '*He is twelve and one- 
half years of age, one of seven people living in three 
rooms. These rooms are such as can be rented for 
$7.50 per month. Eight dollars and sixty cents per 
week pays the rent, buys fuel, clothing, pays the fee 
required in the parochial school, in short, provides 
all the required needs of this family. There is no 
place for health recreation. The house is crowded, 
dreary, uninviting." Jacob Riis believes that "it is 
the home itsdf which constitutes their [the children 
of the poor] chief hardship." Some years ago an 
Englishman personally investigated the history of 
one thousand criminals. He found that two hun- 
dred and fifty, or one fourth of the total, were 
brought to that condition through the influence of 
bad company. A prison warden recently made this 
observation: "The higher the character of the 
daily pursuits, the greater the unlikelihood of falling 
into crime; the more secure the employment, the 
higher the earnings, the lower the percentage of 
criminals." Bad home environment, unfortunate 
street influences, and lack of regular and healthful 
occupation are three extremely potent causes of 
criminality and pauperism. The picture of the 
240 



THE JUVENILE DELINQUENT 

juvenile delinquent is indeed a sad one ; but it is a 
typical representation of the environment in which 
thousands of precious young lives are growing to 
manhood and womanhood. 

Forty or fifty children from a great variety of 
homes now come to each of our primary class- 
rooms, — children whose home life and playground 
experiences are radically dissimilar. One child per- 
haps lives in a two- or three-room shack, and plays 
in the street or the alley ; another dwells in a man- 
sion, and plays in a well-shaded yard. The parents 
of one child understand and appreciate child 
nature; he is properly nourished and clothed, and 
the character ot the home life and surroundings is 
excellent. The child occupymg the next desk may 
be kicked and cuffed at home ; he is poorly fed and 
clothed. These two children, for example, of 
radically dissimilar experiences and opportunities, 
come to the classroom and are mingled with two 
score other restless youngsters of like age. Hered- 
ity and environment have done their work; no two 
of these children are equal in physical endurance, 
mental ability or moral stamina. Yet, almost of 
necessity, our public-school system is attempting to 
force these children into lockstep. Financial con- 
ditions, educational traditions and unsympathetic 
public opinion are guilty of causing enormous 
pedagogical waste. It should be axiomatic that 
children from a great variety of homes, subject to 
very different home influences, cannot be effectively 
and efficiently dealt with en masse. Boys whose 
only playground is the street are in a very different 
i6 241 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

receptive mood from those who are favored with 
large and commodious playgrounds ; the boy whose 
home atmosphere is elevating should be treated 
differently from the youth whose home exerts a 
depressing influence. 

A child is a bundle of energy which seeks legiti- 
mate outlet In order that the child may develop 
normally such outlets must be provided. The 
home, the school and the playground must furnish 
the boy or girl with opportunities to exercise, to 
express himself or herself, to develop and grow 
into good and useful manhood or womanhood. In 
too many instances each institution pursues a 
repressive policy which is often detrimental to the 
child. In many cases, no doubt, this is due to cir- 
cumstances which do not readily admit of change. 
The child lives in a small home. As a consequence, 
his noise is almost of necessity repressed and he 
is sternly rebuked because of it. His street games 
are interfered with and interrupted by the passer- 
by, older boys or the policeman. He goes to the 
schoolroom, and is told to sit still for, to him, a long 
period. His teacher gives him a book and expects 
him to study it ; the book presents ideas which are 
often completely foreign to his experience. He has 
nothing in common with this printed page, no clue 
whereby to connect it with his experience outside 
the schoolroom. Is it strange that truant and "in- 
corrigible" boys are found in our city schools? 
Must it not be expected that the boy and his teacher 
will sometimes clash in regard to their ideas of 
242 



THE JUVENILE DELINQUENT 

right and wrong? Is it extraordinary that the boy 
often looks upon older persons with suspicion? 

No boy or girl is wholly bad or depraved. 
'There is no such thing as a bad boy." Buried 
somewhere beneath the rough and often coarse 
exterior can be found a heart. The heart should 
be cultivated rather than trampled upon, as it so 
often is. Much could be done toward the uplifting 
of mankind if we would only search for the heart 
in a boy and then try to lead it in the right direction. 
"Get at the heart of the boy and you have won the 
head of him and his fellows. You have won the 
coming generation over to a higher line of con- 
duct." Rowdyism and crime are to a large extent 
due to pent-up energy which has not found proper 
vent; vice is misdirected energy. A restless, eager, 
alert, active child needs continual opportunity to 
play, to work, to construct and to tear down. As 
Dr. C. R. Henderson has written : 'The boy must 
be kept busy till he is sleepy, and he must wake up 
and get up at a regular minute or he is in danger." 
Education, from the psychological point of view, 
consists in giving proper direction to the normal 
activities of the child, and in the formation of 
regular and good habits of action and expression. 
The rush of population into the urban centers and 
the loss of the home industries has deprived the 
city boy of his home chores and of his playground, 
and we are just awakening to the fact that a sub- 
stitute must be furnished or the city boy will not 
attain a normal and healthful development. 

243 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

In school he is repressed and kept quiet ; when he 
comes out of the schoolroom he is ushered into a 
world in which no special provision is made for 
him. Our homes, with perhaps a few exceptions, 
provide no special place for the child; the architect 
seems to be utterly oblivious of his presence. If 
he is continually restrained by the policeman on the 
street, the parents in the home, and the teacher in 
the school, the natural and inevitable result, if the 
child is normal, healthy and vigorous, is attempted 
evasion of rules and regulations. Particularly in 
the crowded and poorer districts of the great cities 
is the child an outcast. He is obliged to shift for 
himself, and the street, of necessity, becomes his 
playground and loafing place. Such a life inevi- 
tably breeds irregularity and distaste for any regu- 
lar occupation ; it allows the child to grow up in 
idleness, and throws him into contact with bad and 
immoral influences. It is not strange that there 
are so many truants, "unruly boys," and juvenile 
• delinquents ; rather is it a matter of astonishment 
that there are so few. 

A child does not get into mischief just for the 
sake of mischief, but because he must do something, 
because he must find an outlet for his surplus 
energy. There is always some particular liking or 
desire which, if discovered, offers an entrance to 
the heart of a child. In order that the school may 
be directive, not repressive, it is necessary that the 
teacher study the motives and impulses of the young 
from the standpoint of the latter. Their motives, 
ideals and ambitions cannot be appreciated from 
244 



THE JUVENILE DELINQUENT 

the adult point of view ; if the teacher is unable or 
unwilling to take the point of view of the child, the 
opportunity of helping the youthful student at 
critical periods in his life is lost. A prominent 
educator has said : 'The child loves to be obedient ; 
he loves law, not restrictive, but directive." The 
author believes that teachers of manual training, 
nature study, drawing, or kindergarten work will 
agree with this statement. We give the child prob- 
lems which are to him new and foreign ; we make 
him a mere solver of artificial problems. He has 
his own personal experiences, he has his own prob- 
lems which he is very anxious to solve ; but these 
are resolutely cast aside and not utilized by the 
teacher. 

If children are found in our crowded school- 
rooms who chafe under and are not readily amenable 
to the discipline there in force, it should be clear 
that the correct kind of training is not or cannot be 
given them. No teacher, no matter how con- 
scientious or efficient she may be, can properly treat 
particular cases in a school of forty or fifty bright, 
energetic and restless children. Many cases require 
special treatment; and viewed from a purely 
financial point of view — let the taxpayer take notice 
— it is more desirable to treat the case now than 
later in the career of the particular individual. 
Many children in the crowded schoolrooms of our 
densely populated cities will, if left to their own 
devices, become unworthy specimens of humanity, 
or perhaps criminals. Yet these children are not 
bad; they are "morally sick." Improper training 

245 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

and environment In both home and school have, in 
a large measure, made them what they are to-day. 
Work and treatment should be given which will 
turn them toward better ideals and good citizen- 
ship, and which will aid in the formation of regular 
and good habits, for good habits are the basis of 
crime prevention. For example, a boy whose only 
playground is the street, and who is continually 
thrown into contact with an undesirable class of 
companions, soon gets the notion that it is manly 
to smoke cigarettes. Now no amount of lessons 
on physiology or talks on the evils of smoking will 
have any lasting effect upon that boy. If he is to 
give up what now seems to him to be an essential 
of manhood, a very strong concrete motive for such 
an action must be given him. A new inspiring 
ideal must be held up before him ; and this must be 
one which appeals to the youth, not merely to the 
adult. Athletics is one particularly beneficial agent 
which should be employed in the treatment of such 
cases. No successful athlete can be an habitual 
smoker of cigarettes ; in general, his habits must be 
good. Here is disclosed one of the great benefits 
of well-directed athletic sports. The desire to 
excel in athletics, and the emulation of such excel- 
lence is a deep and abiding trait in the young. As 
Emerson has well said, *'Man can only be reformed 
by showing him a new idea which commands his 
own.'* But we should do better than this; we 
should aim to so form the habits and character 
as to make reforming unnecessary. The possibil- 
ities offered by manual training, domestic science, 
246 



THE JUVENILE DELINQUENT 

athletics, nature study, gardening, excursions, vaca- 
tion schools, drawing, modeling, etc., are many and 
very inspiring to the student of educational 
problems. 

There are two phases in the problem of the 
truant, the so-called "incorrigible" child, or the 
juvenile delinquent. First, the school curriculum 
and methods must be so modified as to work posi- 
tively and effectively toward the diminution of 
these forms of moral disease among the young. 
Secondly, the treatment of the case after it has 
reached the acute stage. Much of the discussion 
in this book bears upon the first phase ; but specific 
treatment will be deferred until the last chapter. 
The remainder of the present chapter will be 
devoted to a consideration of the "special" school 
for the treatment of truants and others who do not 
readily conform to the regulations which are neces- 
sary in the public schools as they are organized 
to-day. Four classes of such schools may be men- 
tioned, — the truant, the day industrial, the parental 
and the reform school. 

The truant school need not detain us. The 
truants and unruly children are segregated here, 
but receive no special treatment. Little can be said 
in its favor except that it removes this class of 
children from the regular classroom. The next 
step in advance brings the day industrial schooL 
The children who are sent to this school live 
at home, but are kept at the school during the 
greater portion of the day. One meal is usuaUy 
served at the school. The parental school, however, 
247 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

represents the highest and best in the treatment of 
the truant. This is a combination of home and 
school under a single management. These special 
schools should not be so much reformative as direct- 
ive. Children requiring special care and treatment 
should be placed in special schools where the classes 
are small and where individual treatment can be 
given. Here skilled teachers will endeavor to 
preserve for future good citizenship the child who, 
if left to his own devices or to the mercies of an 
ungraded school, will become an' unworthy speci- 
men of humanity. These truants and unruly chil- 
dren are misguided ; they need sympathy, intelligent 
aid and cooperation. They should be treated as 
students, not as criminals. These future citizens 
must be cared for in an educational, not a penal, 
institution. Emphasis should be laid upon this 
fact. Bolts, bars, locks or high walls are not found 
in the best institutions of this character; there is 
nothing about them to indicate the correctional 
institution. A stranger visiting the Chicago Par- 
ental School, for example, would not guess that it 
was a school for truants and morally imperiled chil- 
dren. In this school much stress is laid upon 
regularity and constant employment. Military 
drill, manual training, gymnastic exercises and 
farm work are added to the curriculum of the city 
schools of Chicago. ''Physical training is not a 
fad, not merely beneficial, but a necessity in the 
training of truants," writes a former principal. 

The child always desires to use hands, legs, eyes. 
In the parental school advantage is taken of this 
248 



THE JUVENILE DELINQUENT 

desire. Healthy children are not lazy; they are 
active, and we have only to turn their activities into 
proper channels under proper conditions in order 
to utilize them for the building of character. The 
changed mental attitude of the child who is given 
manual training, gardening and gymnastics leads 
logically to the conclusion that our regular ele- 
mentary-school work should contain a greater 
amount of this sort of training. More careful 
experiments, made in a school utilized as a peda- 
gogical laboratory, are needed in order that intelli- 
gent aid may be given educators in their attempts 
to substitute a more rational system of training for 
elementary-school children than our present hap- 
hazard, pieced-together curriculum is able to offer. 
The ordinary public school cannot remedy bad 
environment, directly at least. Good results can 
only be expected in the majority of truancy cases 
when the surroundings and daily life of the child 
are modified or completely changed. The parental 
school takes the child out of the bad and familiar 
surroundings and thus has a real opportunity to 
strengthen these morally imperiled children. Proper 
treatment of the young offender is much cheaper 
than the cost of the crime and of the imprisonment 
of the older delinquent; and if we are able to 
reclaim the young boy, a producer, a worker, is 
given to the city in the place of an idler and 
destroyer Let it again be noticed that if we can 
look no further than our pocketbooks, and many 
cannot, the argument is still favorable to modern 
preventive methods in the treatment of the young 
249 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

offender. Retribution and reformation are to be 
displaced by prevention. 

The benefit of parental schools is threefold. 
They are desirable from the standpoint of the good 
student, of the unruly and truant child, and of the 
teacher. Parental schools remove a source of irri- 
tation and danger from the good and obedient 
student; they give positive aid to the other class of 
students; and, lastly, they relieve the overburdened 
teacher. Compulsory education can never be a 
success until day industrial and parental schools 
are added to the public-school system, or until the 
ordinary school is more closely fashioned after the 
parental school. If the school system becomes 
better prepared to practically aid the child, to take 
advantage of his experience and desires, the amount 
of truancy and incorrigibility will decrease, as this 
is the result of abnormal conditions in school or 
home, or in both. As education approaches the dig- 
nity of a science, as the cumulative effect of better 
schools and better homes is felt, generation after 
generation, as our cities and homes are made 
habitable and healthy, the truant and the "incor- 
rigible" will gradually disappear. 

The reform school is an institution "necessary 
for youth who have committed acts which would 
send an adult to the state penitentiary, as larceny, 
arson, stabbing." The best reformatories, as for 
example the Elmira Reformatory, utilize manual 
training, military drill and regular work. "The 
occupations should be, as far as possible, agri- 
cultural and horticultural, and the educational 
250 



THE JUVENILE DELINQUENT 

influences should tend toward a career in the coun- 
try. Even for rural industry the elements of a 
trade should be taught. Since many boys from 
cities are certain to return to their homes, a great 
variety of trades must be taught to meet their 
wants."^ 

The Chicago parental school is probably one of 
the best of its kind in the world. It is an integral 
part of the public-school system. This school was 
opened in 1902. It is located in the northwestern 
part of the city, on a fifty-acre lot, remote from 
the crowded portions of the city. The environment 
is practically rural. The school is organized on the 
cottage plan; the children are divided into groups 
of about thirty, and each group is placed in the 
care of a man and his wife. The attempt is made 
to reproduce as far as possible real homes and 
family life in a good environment. *'As the home 
and social conditions of the boys committed to this 
school are not the best possible, we aim to give 
them a good home and proper traming in manners 
and morals as well as intellectual culture. To this 
end we are careful to select, as family officers, men 
and women of education and refinement, and the 
remarkable change in the deportment of paroled 
pupils of this school, noted by teachers and prin- 
cipals, is largely due to the influence of our 'family 
instructors.' "^ The report states : "What these 
boys most need is good diet and hygienic exercise. 
We emphasize our dietary." Food, environment 

* Henderson, Dependents, Defectives, Delinquents, p. 239. 
' First Annual Report of the Chicago Parental School. 
251 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

and physical exercise, — if these three elements act 
beneficially upon the child, half of his battle of life 
is won. Only a small percentage of children who 
are improperly nourished, whose environment is 
depressing or demoralizing, or who have little, 
opportunity for healthful physical exercise and 
work, can hope to rise above the level of their sur- 
roundings. We talk much about equality of oppor- 
tunity in education, but we often overlook the facts 
in the case. The real value of the parental school 
lies in placing the child in a good environment, 
feeding him in a wholesome and simple manner, 
and providing work and regular exercise for him. 
The George Junior Republic, about which so much 
has been written, is in reality a private parental 
school. The experience of this school adds to the 
testimony as to the value and necessity of regular 
occupation and wholesome environmental conditions. 
In Cook County jail, Chicago, the author once 
witnessed a most pathetic sight. In an upper room 
of that grim and forbidding structure some twenty- 
five or thirty juvenile criminals were being given 
military drill, light gymnastic exercises and instruc- 
tion in vocal music. The squad was in charge of 
the matron of the institution, assisted by two or 
three inmates. Jailor Whitman remarked, "These 
boys have no idea of right living." They were 
criminals because of their environment and lack of 
proper training. Mr. Whitman firmly believed that 
this daily drill and exercise, teaching them to act 
in unison with others and to move with preci- 
sion, would be of much benefit to these young 
252 



THE JUVENILE DELINQUENT 

unfortunates who were temporarily in his charge. 
What a social waste, because the proper formation 
of these young minds has been neglected ! 

"The evils of poverty are not barren, but pro- 
creative; the workers in poverty are, in spite of 
themselves, giving to the world a litter of misera- 
bles, whose degeneracy is so stubborn and fixed 
that reclamation is almost impossible, especially 
when the only process of reclamation must consist 
m trying to force the pauper, vagrant and weakling 
back mto that struggle with poverty which is all 
the time defeating stronger and better natures."^ 
The improvement of the environmental conditions 
in our cities and villages will conduce to a lower 
birth rate for those populations who now have an 
undesirably large one. Misery and a high birth rate 
are boon companions. The proper enlargement 
and exercise of the true functions of public educa- 
tion are at the root of the economic and social 
betterment of modern democratic society. 

^ Hunter, Poverty, Preface. 



^53 



CHAPTER XIV 
NEW EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS 

This chapter is devoted to a discussion of certain 
recent actual or proposed extensions of the func- 
tions of the school — innovations which tend par- 
ticularly to enlarge its social character. These new 
functions are typical of the democratizing tend- 
encies in modern education. As yet, they are nearly 
all in the experimental stage, and have by no means 
attained the full measure of service which may be 
expected of them. The active propaganda in favor 
of the parental school, the continuation school, and 
the various educational innovations discussed in 
this chapter marked the opening of the fourth period 
in our educational history. These educational inno- 
vations are clearly semi-socialistic in their nature, 
and several of them have received the support of 
a new social power, — the women's organizations. 
A severe crisis or long-continued trade depression 
would probably cause the public to direct its atten- 
tion toward the school and would so crystallize 
public sentiment that the majority of these addi- 
tional educational functions would soon become 
permanently added to the work of the public school, 
instead of being supported in a half-hearted way 
or of standing in danger of being discontinued or 
254 



NEW EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS 

curtailed with every change of school administra- 
tion. New educational projects which the present 
era makes desirable are opposed, as has always 
been the case in educational history, by the imme- 
diate economic interests of the taxpayer on the one 
hand, and on the other by the conservatism and 
apathy of the great mass of the people, which of 
course includes the taxpayers. Only when indus- 
trial and commercial conditions become unpro- 
pitious does a demand arise on the part of the 
masses which breaks down all barriers. In the 
early era of educational advance in the nineteenth 
century, progress was checked by the continual 
westward emigration, the slavery agitation and 
communistic projects. The attention of the people 
was drawn from the question of education into 
other channels. To-day the greatest danger from 
reactionary tendencies seems to lie in imperialism, 
— in the overshadowing of local issues by foreign 
politics. 

The School as a Social Center and a 
Playground 
The school of the future is to be an almost con- 
tinuous affair, with functions which vary with the 
time of day and the season of the year. In a score 
or two of years the present functions of the school 
will be looked upon as rudimentary, as representing 
an early stage in the development of the economic 
and social duties which properly belong to this 
important institution of society. Social intercourse 
with others and play-activity are now generally 

255 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

recognized as two vital constructive factors in the 
education of young men and women ; but boards of 
education and teachers have not all as yet recog- 
nized that the school should consider and actively 
direct these two educative activities. In earlier 
generations supervision was perhaps unnecessary; 
but crowding into cities has placed great restric- 
tions upon these essential activities, or has caused 
them to be carried on in such a manner and under 
such auspices that they become instruments which 
promote an abnormal rather than a normal and 
healthy development. The evil has been recognized 
for many years ; but the remedy and the method of 
applying a remedy were not so apparent. Many 
have seen clearly the evils of the street gang, the 
saloon, and the dance hall, for example, and have 
immediately cried out for suppression of the evil 
by the hand of the law. They would remove the 
effect, but leave unchanged and unaffected the 
causes which have brought these crying evils into 
being. Crime, vice, disease, inefficiency and pau- 
perism are produced, of course, by no single, 
glaring cause, but rather by a multitude of forces 
of various kinds. These evils are but the outward 
and signal manifestations of social maladjustments 
which are not visible to the impulsive and super- 
ficial observer. Mere repression is only an external 
remedy, and usually a very inefficient one. The 
wise social physician must look beyond consequence 
to cause. Curative measures are desirable; but in 
preventive measures lies the hope of the world. 
Professor Patten has pointed out the line of least 
256 



NEW EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS 

resistance in words which ought to be burned deeply 
into the memory of every one interested in human 
progress and in world betterment : "Vice must 
first be fought by welfare, not by restraint; and 
society is not safe until to-day's pleasures are 
stronger than its temptations. . . . Amusement is 
stronger than vice and can stifle the lust of it." 

Of all the forces which are inducing these social 
maladies we are, in this section, particularly con- 
cerned with the two which grow out of the 
unnatural perversion of the desire for and the 
necessity of play and social intercourse. Street 
gangs are natural products of the innate need of 
exercise, and of meeting with one's fellows. So 
far this is natural and therefore good ; the evil 
creeps in chiefly on account of the conditions which 
obtain in cities, and in villages as well, and because 
few attempts have been made to intelligently turn 
the activities of this group of young people into 
healthful and beneficial channels. The newsboys 
of a large city are usually addicted to swearing, 
smoking, petty gambling and perhaps petty thiev- 
ing. The street is their training school — in many 
cases their home. Many unthinking people would 
probably say that the majority of the street boys 
were "hopeless" ; yet Mr. John Gunckel of Toledo 
has organized the newsboys of that city in such a 
masterful way that many of the faults and frailties 
of the average newsboy have been overcome. He 
has worked faithfully year in and year out; he has 
held meetings for the newsboys, has organized a 
union and various minor clubs and associations. 
17 257 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

This gentleman has succeeded in building up a pub- 
lic opinion among this class of boys in that city which 
is good and which augers well for their future. The 
energy, the ambition, the impulse, the ideals were 
all there before Mr. Gunckel took hold of this work ; 
he skilfully directed the boys away from the 
breakers of crime and profanity into the quieter 
waters of higher ideals and nobler aspirations. 
This is not easily done; but, the point is, it can be 
done, and it pays the community to have it done. 

The saloon and the dance hall, against which 
so much is said, are places where adults and young 
people congregate for social enjoyment and diver- 
sion. The industrial worker, tied down for long 
hours to a monotonous, ceaseless repetition of 
simple movements, comes home to a small house 
crowded with people o"^ various ages; a poorly 
cooked and badly served meal is hastily swallowed. 
This disposed of, the tired worker finds no place 
within the home where friends may be taken, no 
opportunity to play games, or even perhaps no 
quiet corner in which to read a book or a magazine. 
What happens? He or she goes outside the home 
for comfort, for social enjoyment and for diversion. 
The saloon, the poolroom, the cheap theater and 
the dance hall stand open and aggressively invite 
all comers. They are warm, well-lighted and com- 
fortable. Unless a substitute can be furnished for 
these features of city life, so long will the youths and 
adults be drawn into the net which drags them down. 
The degrading and demoralizing influences of our 
city life have been made so cheap that there are few 
258 



NEW EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS 

too poor to partake of them. The ennobHng and 
uplifting influences are, alas, usually expensive. 
In modern life the individual is so helpless ; he is 
bound and restrained in a thousand ways. Society 
must provide those things which he needs but 
cannot obtain unaided. Without the aid of many 
collective agencies the life of the city dwellers 
must become barren and unprogressive. These 
impulses and these human needs, which are products 
of the historic or pre-historic past, are not to be 
readily and completely changed; they must be 
accepted and turned to good use. Society as a 
whole is to-day in a large measure responsible for 
the development of each and every individual ; its 
institution, the public school, must take up the 
work of providing opportunity for social inter- 
course and play. It should take up the work which 
many social settlements and playground associa- 
tions have started. Make the schoolhouse and the 
''field house" community centers. 

New York City has taken the lead in this matter. 
In that city, during the recent winter, many of the 
public-school buildings were kept open. "Several 
thousand boys and girls over fourteen were enter- 
tained in them with basketball, gymnastics, checkers, 
ping-pong, picture books, dancing, and club meet- 
ings." In the summer many more are open in the 
afternoon for "games and light manual instruction." 
The roofs of the school buildings have also been 
utilized in the summer for children to play games 
and dance to simple music. Enthusiastic temper- 
ance workers and reformers of many kinds have a 

259 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

promising field for work if they will preach stead- 
fastly the gospel of the community center as a 
public-school function. 

At the annual convention of the American Fed- 
eration of Labor in 1904, President Gompers pro- 
posed that the local labor unions ask for permission 
to meet in the public-school buildings. If labor 
unions and clubs and societies of various kinds are 
to meet in the school buildings, if the children are 
to come here in the evening to play games, if read- 
ing rooms are to be established, some modifications 
from the conventional schoolhouse plans must of 
course follow. Each building must have at least 
one assembly room or lecture hall. The desks must 
be so fastened that they can be easily removed. 
The teaching and janitor force must be enlarged. 
But the expense will be slight in comparison with 
the results to be anticipated. 

The school garden is another innovation which 
has been tried in some of the eastern cities. This 
is merely an extension of the manual-training 
movement, and offers a good opportunity to corre- 
late it with nature study. Nearly every city has 
many vacant lots which might be profitably utilized 
by the school authorities for playgrounds and school 
gardens. When we have accepted the view that 
manual training, nature study, agriculture and 
many other new subjects are necessary in our 
school curriculum, we can hardly avoid adding to 
the list of school activities directed play, vacation 
schools, lecture courses and reading rooms. They 
follow logically as a matter of course. 
260 



NEW EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS 

Mr. Hearne has told us that in Japan the local 
temple grounds are utilized as places of amuse- 
ment; festivals and various social functions of the 
people are held here. Children at all times use the 
temple groves and grounds as playgrounds. In 
this respect, what the temple and its grounds are 
to the Japanese, the school and its yard should 
become to the American youth. As the Japanese 
entwine their religion and their temples into their 
daily life, so should we of the Occident make edu- 
cation and the school a part and parcel of our 
social- and industrial life. 

In Prussia, in 1897, at least 2,000 schools had 
public play and gymnastics combined. In German 
cities the school authorities hire teachers to "guide 
the children in their games, suggest new ones, 
decide disputes, answer questions with regard to 
things new to the children, and make themselves 
generally useful without becoming oppressive by 
exercising school authority." In Boston a number 
of the school buildings have been thrown open for 
free lectures and concerts, and in one school at 
least rooms have been thrown open in the evening 
for the purposes of study. One of the teachers is 
present to preserve order and render assistance. 
Germany has advanced so far along this road that 
teachers are being trained in normal schools of play. 
In Toledo the municipal authorities give sleigh- 
rides to the younger school children. Horses and 
bob-sleds belonging to the city departments are 
utilized for this purpose. In the winter some cities 
flood the playgrounds and convert them into public 
261 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

skating rinks. Professor Zueblin states that in 
Chicago, during the winter of 1901-1902, "no 
fewer than two hundred" municipal skating rinks 
were estabhshed. Many vacant lots were utilized 
for the purpose. It is estimated that in 1907 
Chicago possessed over ninety-three acres of play- 
grounds ; Philadelphia, one hundred and ten acres ; 
and Boston, two hundred acres. A physician esti- 
mates that "the city of Philadelphia spends more 
resources and employs more agents in the interests 
of public health to-day than did the whole English- 
speaking world a century ago."^ The gymnasium, 
physical training, athletics and organized play are 
rapidly becoming integral parts of our educational 
work both for adults and for the young. 

Closely connected with the increasing importance 
of the school as a playground and a social center, 
and supplementing its work, is the movement to 
provide free public baths and free concerts for the 
public. Municipal baths are now maintained by 
many cities. In Brookhne, Massachusetts, pro- 
vision is made in the high-school program for 
swimmmg during school hours. Squads are sent 
twice a week to the municipal bath houses. The 
boys are sent in the forenoon and the girls in the 
afternoon. In both Chicago and Toledo the free 
band concert has proved a boon to thousands of 
people on hot, sultry summer evenings and after- 
noons. The school buildings could also be utilized 
in the winter for indoor concerts, at very little 
expense. The old medieval conception of the 

^ R. C. Newton, Popular Science Monthly, August, 1907. 
262 



NEW EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS 

worthlessness of the human body is rapidly passing. 
The first decade of the twentieth century is indeed 
witnessing the ''renaissance of the physical con- 
science." The school is no longer a mere ''brain 
refinery" ; education is now "humaniculture." Mod- 
ern industry, with its routine work, its sedentary 
occupations and its growing cities, coupled with 
increasing leisure for all workers, has forced the 
problem of physical training and of amusement 
upon society. An industrial people which neglects 
these essentials must inevitably perish. The early 
and crude attempts at the solution of the problem 
have been chiefly the results of a blind outcropping 
of the instinct of racial preservation, joined with a 
humanitarian impulse stirred by the sight of the 
crowded and cheerless city. The hopeful and 
important results which have already been achieved 
presage that a great forward step will follow a 
systematic and scientific study of this problem. 

The Utilization of the Summer Vacation 
The rise of the vacation school is significant for 
two reasons. First, it emphasizes the desirability 
of play, manual training and contact with nature as 
a part of our educational scheme. Text-books are 
rarely used in a vacation school; books are only 
referred to as the necessity arises, or as the child 
feels the desire for further instruction in regard to 
some particular subject. Secondly, the vacation 
school is an attempt to fill up a gap, during 
the summer, which modern industrial conditions 
have created. A rural community has little need 

263 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

ordltiarily for a vacation schooL When the inhabit- 
ants of the L^nited States were ahnost wholly rnral, 
the long summer vacation was utilized by placing 
the young people at work on the farm, while the 
younger children busied themselves the entire day 
in play in the open air. Economic and climatic 
conditions conspired to produce the long summer 
vacation, — a very desirable feature in the physical, 
industrial and intellectual education of the time. 
Eventually it came to be a dogma that the intel- 
lectual worker, young or old, needed a long rest 
each year. Lhider city and village conditions these 
advantages in a large measure disappear ; the vaca- 
tion degenerates into a period of demoralization 
instead of one of rest, or rather of desirable and 
beneficial change of occupation. As a result, the 
vacation school, the summer camp or excursion to 
the country for the young, and the summer school 
for the older students, have become well-known 
institutions, and are destined to secure permanent 
places in our educational system. The harvest 
field on the one hand, and the restriction of the 
function of the school to purely intellectual drill 
and discipline on the other, can no longer be ofifered 
as valid excuses or sufficient reasons for the con- 
tinued adherence to the traditional school and col- 
lege calendar. 

The first vacation school was established in 
Boston in 1885. Many other cities soon followed; 
but all of the early schools were established by 
private initiative. In 1899 vacation schools were 
established in New York City under the supervision 
264 



NEW EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS 

of the Board of Education. Such schools had 
already been maintained for four summers under 
the auspices of various private associations. In 
1902, 32 school buildings were utilized for this 
purpose v^ith an average attendance of 12,916 
pupils; in 1903, the figures were increased to 54 
and 18,927 respectively; but in 1904, for financial 
reasons, only 39 buildings were utilized during the 
summer, with an average attendance of 17,446 
pupils. The total expenditures for the vacation 
schools of this city were $42,751.44 in 1902, 
$122,121.30 in 1903, and $73,847.77 in 1904.^ 
These items form only a very small part of the total 
expenditures for the schools of New York City, 
which were $27,848,853.16 in 1903-1904. 

A typical program of work in a vacation school 
usually allows about forty minutes each for such 
subjects as nature study, drawing, music and gym- 
nastics, gardening, manual training or sewing. 
Vacation schools are desirable both from the edu- 
cational and the economic point of view. They are 
in all respects cheaper and better than reform 
schools, and are made desirable, as are playgrounds, 
on account of the crowded conditions of our cities. 
The vacation school illustrates another form of 
encroachment on the part of the school upon the 
former functions of the home and of the play- 
ground. At least one great university, Chicago, 
has fully recognized the uselessness of the long 
summer vacation. This university divides its school 
year into four quarters of twelve weeks each. The 

* Palmer, The New York Public Schools. 
265 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

work of the summer quarter counts towards a 
degree exactly as does the work of any other quar- 
ter. By attending during the entire four quarters 
of each year, students may complete the usual four- 
year college or undergraduate course in three years. 

The School City 
By means of the school city an attempt is made 
to give the children, in a practical manner, a knowl- 
edge of the functions and the problems of govern- 
ment, particularly of local government, and to 
illustrate the duties and obligations of citizens 
whether of a school or a city community. The 
plan, as now usually carried out, is said to have 
originated in the mind of Mr. Wilson L. Gill. It 
has been tried in several different cities, among 
which are Philadelphia, Chicago and Toledo. 
Mr. Gill was invited to Cuba by General Leonard 
Wood, and spent some time introducing the system 
into the schools of that island. The apparent suc- 
cess of the George Junior Republic, which is 
managed on a self-governing basis, has led many 
other institutions to pattern after it. The real, 
although most forgotten, prototype of the school 
city is probably Fellenberg's school at Hofwyl, 
Switzerland. Fellenberg was an educator of great 
merit whose name is worthy of being ranked 
alongside, if not above, those of Pestalozzi and 
Froebel. The school at Hofwyl was organized in 
1805, and contmued in operation until the death of 
its founder and master over forty years later. 
Robert Dale Owen was a student in this school. 
266 



NEW EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS 

This distinguished pupil gives the following descrip- 
tion of the government of the institution : '*We 
'Were proud that our republic had no laws but those 
we ourselves had made. It had its council of leg- 
islation, its courts of judges, its civil and military 
officers, and its public treasury. It had its annual 
elections by ballot, at which each student had a 
vote; its privileges and honors equally accessible to 
all ; its labors and duties shared by all."^ Later in 
its history these formal methods were cast aside as 
cumbersome and unwieldy, but the spirit of the 
institution was unchanged. 

The school city tries to impress upon the children 
the idea that they are participants and sharers in 
the duties and responsibilities of the school com- 
munity. Emphasis is laid upon the rights and 
privileges of others, upon the necessity of coopera- 
tion in keeping the school building and school yard 
clean and neat, upon the fact that the school prop- 
erty is their property and that they are responsible 
for its proper use. The school city tries, through 
its governmental machinery, to create a strong pub- 
lic sentiment in favor of law and order. It makes 
plain to the student body the simple proposition 
that the noisy and disobedient student violates the 
rights of others, — that the boy who cuts his desk 
or destroys shrubbery in the school yard is destroy- 
ing the property of the entire school community. 
In short, it is a "moral and civic apprenticeship." 

* R. D. Owen, Threading My Way: An Autobiography, 
pp. 152-3- 

267 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

Any means which can genuinely and permanently 
interest the student in current events or in local, 
state and national administration and government, 
is very desirable. The school city is, in reality, an 
extension of the laboratory method. By means of 
it teachers try to form good citizens; they train 
students on an experimental stage where many of 
the conditions are prescribed in advance. It is, 
however, the spirit rather than the machinery upon 
which the emphasis must be laid. The skilful 
teacher should never relax his authority, but must 
gradually mold public opinion in the school so as 
to bring about the desired result. The possibilities 
and chances of success also seem to be greater in 
the elementary than in the high school. In the 
latter, unless very skilfully managed by the prin- 
cipal and teachers, it is often considered by the 
students to be a sort of play government and is 
liable to receive only a sort of contemptuous 
allegiance. At least this was the result of expe- 
rience in Toledo. One of the best ward schools in 
that city has been operated for several years as a 
school city. Among the officers are a mayor, coun- 
cilmen, and sanitary and health officers. The 
result has been good, but the system has not been 
extended to the other ward schools. The Toledo 
University School, of high-school grade, tried the 
school-city plan for two years, and the result may 
undoubtedly be counted a complete failure. The 
superintendent lost control of the mechanism, and 
the would-be young orator was given too great an 

268 



NEW EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS 

opportunity. The necessary interest and school 
sentiment were not aroused. 

There is danger to-day, in this age of world-wide 
politics and international interests, of overlooking 
or neglecting the near-by, the home community, 
and local welfare and interests ; there is a danger 
of abandoning rigid inspection of local matters 
because of an appeal to larger, more distant affairs. 
At this time, when the air is filled with rumors of 
imperialistic policies, it is well for the school to lay 
emphasis upon the forms of local government ; it 
is right that the school should train the young men 
and women intrusted to its care to take an active 
interest in local matters, and to understand the 
machinery of the local government. If the local 
government is kept pure and efficient, the state and 
national government will also be honest and 
efficient. 

If the school city can give to the child of the 
immigrant a true conception of the plan upon which 
our government rests, truly a great work will be 
accomplished. Heretofore their great teacher, and 
the teacher of many native Americans as well, has 
been the too well-known ward "boss." From him 
the future American citizen has learned the lessons 
of civic duty and of civic ideals. Only one institu- 
tion, and that not a public but a private one, — 
the labor union, — has really taught the lesson of 
democratic government. The trade union has been 
and is a great Americanizing and unifying force. 
But even the labor union has taken on some of the 
undesirable features of our oolitical institutions. 

269 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

The ''boss" and the "machine" have found lodg- 
ment in the management of this most democratic 
of institutions. And is this not to be expected as 
long as our present condition of low civic morality 
continues? The trade union has been the great 
school of modern democracy to thousands; but it 
labors under certain disadvantages which do not 
affect the school. Two of these disadvantages may 
well be mentioned ; the labor union is at present 
necessarily a fighting organization, or at least it 
must be prepared for industrial warfare, and it 
deals with the adults whose opinions and ideals are 
not as easily modified as those of school children. 

Whether the school-city plan be generally adopted 
or not, the fact remains that the school ought to 
display greater activity in regard to the practical 
teaching of good citizenship. Something more con- 
crete and real should be given than mere platitudes 
regarding liberty and freedom. Duties, rather than 
rights, ought to receive the greatest attention. We 
hear much about the sacred rights of the free 
American citizen ; but there is an ominous silence 
upon the subject of the sacred duties of the same 
individual. The right of the ballot is made the 
chief feature of every talk to the student upon 
citizenship; but not so frequently are they told of 
the imperative duty to vote, and to vote for what 
they conceive to be the best principles or the best 
man. The school city is right in principle because 
it employs the laboratory method. It substitutes 
doing for passive assimilation of grandiloquent 
phrases. It is still in the experimental stage, but is 
270 



NEW EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS 

worthy of further study and consideration. In pro- 
portion, however, to the density of population, to 
-the extension of the market area, to the multipli- 
cation of interstate and international relations, to 
the centralization of industry and to the growing 
inequality in the distribution of wealth, the com- 
plexity of the duties of citizenship increases, and 
the necessity of training for citizenship becomes 
important. 

School Savings Banks 

According to statistics which have been gathered 
on this subject, there are about eight hundred pub- 
lic school savings banks in the United States. The 
number of depositors on January, 1905, was nearly 
ninety-one thousand. The total deposits for the 
year 1904 were $1,367,930, or an average of a little 
over $150 for each depositor. Los Angeles ranked 
first in the number of banks, namely fifty-three. 
The school savings system has been tried in more 
than a hundred cities, among the number being 
Los Angeles ; Pittsburg ; New York ; Lynn, Massa- 
chusetts ; Toledo ; Grand Rapids ; and Evanston, 
Illinois. The first bank of this sort is said to have 
been established in France in 1834. Mr. J. H. 
Thiry, of Long Island City, first introduced the 
system into the United States. 

What are the merits and demerits of the school 
savings-bank system? Many wealthy and self- 
made men of to-day are very liberal with advice; 
they tell and reiterate to the rising generation the 
story of how they started on a dollar a day, how 

271 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

by careful frugality and the saving of their pennies 
they became rich and influential. Viewed in the 
light of such testimony, coupled with these old 
id'eals of success, the school savings bank is an 
extremely desirable and important department of 
school work. If, however, we examine the matter, 
if we trace the career of these "self-made" men, it 
is usually discovered that exploitation of natural 
resources, or the ownership of valuable privileges 
or franchises rather than mere frugality furnished 
the real foundations of their wealth getting. To- 
day, by mere saving neither the wage-earner nor 
the average salaried man can become well-to-do. 
Conditions are totally different now from those 
of a quarter- or a half-century ago. Advice based 
upon the experience of a half-century ago is not 
exactly pertinent to the situation to-day. The 
school saving system and Its value must be judged 
in the light of present conditions. 

The wage-earner and the salaried man of to-day 
are obliged in a large measure to place dependence 
upon insurance rather than upon savings. The pen- 
sioning of policemen, firemen, teachers, railway men 
and Industrial workers are live topics in political 
and industrial circles. An extension of public 
activity along this line is probable in the future. 
Thrift is still, however, a highly desirable personal 
characteristic. The main value of the school sav- 
ings system appears to He In the elimination of the 
small, useless and harmful expenditures for such 
articles as candy or cigarettes, or for such amuse- 
ments as pool playing or cheap theaters. It should 

272 



NEW EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS 

aim at improving consumption, rather than at the 
teaching of mere saving in order to see the dollars 
accumulate. By accumulating considerable sums, 
relatively speaking, consumption will be directed 
naturally into better channels. A large sum is much 
more likely to be spent in a beneficial manner than 
are smaller sums; consumption is in such cases 
improved by postponing it. Again, the man who 
has saved a little, who has acquired the com- 
mendable habit of looking a little way into the 
future, is more independent than the one who has 
not, and who is living from hand to mouth. 

If the school savings system w^ill lead to the 
development among the pupils of a habit of calcula- 
tion, of counting the cost, it will be worth the 
trouble and extra labor which must be incurred 
where it is made a part of the public-school work. 
If it can be utilized to aid in doing away with the 
undesirable system of buying on credit to which so 
many wage-earners cling, it will indeed be a valuable 
addition to the functions of the school. The old 
hackneyed arguments in favor of a school savings- 
bank system should be cast upon the scrap heap. 
These arguments may have been valid a generation 
or two ago, but to urge them in good faith to-day 
is to exhibit narrowness of mental vision. 

University Extension and Traveling Libraries 
These two movements aim chiefly at reaching 
the adult working population. The avowed pur- 
pose of these important educational activities is 
to bring to the door of every adult an opportunity 
i8 273 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

of combining recreation and instruction. The 
correspondence school and farmers' institute are 
very similar in their essence to the two educational 
activities now under consideration. Professor 
Herbert B. Adams, of Johns Hopkins University, 
was one of the leading spirits in preparing the way 
for university extension work. In 1890 the Ameri- 
can Society for the Extension of University Teach- 
ing was formed. Two years later that pioneer in 
many lines of university work — the University of 
Chicago — took up this line also, LTniversity-exten- 
sion courses were instituted in many cities during 
the early nineties, but to-day there are only three 
large centers, — Philadelphia, New York and Chi- 
cago. In a recent college year the University of 
Chicago gave over two hundred courses at about one 
hundred and fifty secondary centers. The attendance 
was estimated at about 43,000. The progress of 
university extension has not been as encouraging as 
its original promoters anticipated, but it has per- 
formed an important service. It has demonstrated 
the possibility of reaching the adult. The free lec- 
ture courses of some of the larger cities are probably 
due in a large measure to the impulse given by this 
movement. If this extension movement has done no 
more than to point out to boards of education the 
need and the value of popular lectures, it has ac- 
complished much. The duty of teachers and of 
boards of education is not wholly performed when 
an effort is only made to reach those whom the com- 
pulsory education forces into the schoolroom. The 
274 



NEW EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS 

school should go out into the highways and the 
byways and prepare a table for all comers. 

Fundamentally, the traveling library and uni- 
versity extension have one and the same aim. The 
former goes to the small, isolated community and 
the little crossroads ; it reaches the people whom 
the university-extension movement cannot hope to 
touch; it goes where the permanent free public 
library is impossible or inadvisable. "Fastnesses 
of illiteracy in the mountains of Kentucky, Ten- 
nessee, Alabama and Georgia are being stormed, 
with a rain not of bullets, but of books and pictures, 
and while the proud mountaineer is suspicious and 
fearful of patronage in these free books, yet the 
boundless joy of his children is winning him to 
look upon the traveling library with favor." The 
traveling library reaches the mountaineer of the 
South, the farmer of the North, and the miner of 
the West. The books of this little library supple- 
ment and enrich the work of the rural school. 
While of course book learning is only a small part 
of true education, the use of the book will do much 
to relieve the tediousness and monotony of life, to 
give nourishment to new thoughts and higher 
ideals, and to improve the efficiency of the readers. 

To the island continent of Australia belongs the 
honor of the original conception and utilization of 
the traveling-library system. The public library 
of xAdelaide, Australia, in 1859 sent out eight such 
libraries of thirty volumes each. To Melvil Dewey 
of New York belongs the credit of starting the 
movement in the United States. In 1892 he sent 

275 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

out from the State Library at Albany several 
libraries of one hundred volumes each. The travel- 
ing libraries have been defined as "small collections, 
generally fifty in number, of the best popular books, 
fiction, juvenile, history, biography, science, which 
are sent from one station to another, at intervals 
of six months." Only seven years after the begin- 
ning was made in New York by Mr. Dewey, ''there 
were 2,500 traveling libraries in the United States, 
containing 110,000 volumes, which were read by 
nearly one million people."^ The National Federa- 
tion of Women's Clubs and the farmers' institutes 
of many states have taken hold of this work, and in 
states where no appropriation is allowed have sent 
out many libraries. During the seven years pre- 
ceding 1905 the Illinois Federation of Women's 
Clubs created and sent forth on their journeys 
300 traveling libraries. More than a score of states 
now maintain library-extension boards. The next 
step which has been proposed is to obtain the pas- 
sage of a law which will permit the delivery of the 
books through the rural mail delivery at a very low 
cost. Such a scheme is well worth consideration 
and seems to be a step in advance in the attempt to 
reach, interest and encourage the adult. 

The work of the Wisconsin Free Library Com- 
mission is worthy of further mention. This com- 
mission was established in 1895 and from the first 
recognized the importance of the traveling library. 
In addition to the libraries of the state commission, 
several counties in the state maintain local traveling 

^ Chautauquanj October, 1902. 
276 



NEW EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS 

libraries, and the State Federation of Women's 
Clubs has aided in the work. In August, 1900, there 
were 238 traveling libraries in this state, of which 
number 54 were controlled by the state commis- 
sion. In 1902 this number had increased to 305; 
and in January, 1905, to nearly 400. German, 
Scandinavian, municipal government and study 
libraries have been successfully circulated. In at 
least one county. Portage, a traveling picture 
^'library" has been tried. These pictures comprise 
^'flowers, landscapes, marine views, game and 
religious subjects in photographic and brown and 
colored lithographic reproductions." Each picture 
should be accompanied by a short account of the 
subject and the author. These libraries were cir- 
culated through the medium of the schools, the 
teacher being asked to invite the pupils and their 
parents to the school for an occasional evening to 
enjoy the pictures. Such a movement will aid in 
brightening the walls of many bare and somber 
schoolhouses. In the schoolroom art, sunlight and 
cleanliness should be invoked to aid the teaching 
process; but, alas, how often these efficient aids are 
neglected ! 

Transportation of Children to and from 

School 
This topic may be considered under at least four 
different aspects: (i) Township consolidation of 
rural schools and transportation of children by 
means of wagons; (2) transportation of rural chil- 
dren to town or city schools by means of the steam 
277 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

or electric railroad; (3) transportation of city chil- 
dren to schools situated in a pleasant suburban 
environment, in order that they may receive the 
benefits of fresh air, large playgrounds, contact 
with nature, and contact with agricultural life; 
(4) excursions for school children (a) from coun- 
try to city, and (b) from city to country. 

The consolidation of the rural schools is taking 
place as the result of a demand on the part of the 
farming population for better rural schools. It is 
an attempt to introduce the graded-school system 
and to bring the rural school up to the standard of 
the city schools. Where the graded system can be 
substituted for the one-room, ungraded school of 
the small district better teachers and better appa- 
ratus may be provided, although it leads to the more 
rigid system which large classes necessitates. The 
consolidation of schools seems to be a phase of 
the modern tendency towards centralization of 
authority and management. A Massachusetts law 
of 1869 provided that the school committee "may 
use" funds for transporting school children to and 
from school. In Connecticut a law passed in 1889 
provided for the discontinuance of small schools 
and for union with schools in adjoining districts. 
In 1893 transportation of pupils was authorized. 
In Ohio a special law of 1894 authorized consolida- 
tion of schools and transportation of pupils In 
Kingsville Township, Ashtabula County. By 1903 
twenty-four states had passed laws permitting the 
consolidation of rural schools and the transportation 
of pupils at public expense. The usual conveyance 

278 



NEW EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS 

is a wagon or a sled; but in several districts the 
trolley has been utilized. During the winter of 
1900-1901, for example, a trolley car was run at 
the expense of the town of Stamford, Connecticut, 
to convey school children from Shippan Point to 
one of the town schools. 

The concensus of opinion seems to be that the 
consolidation of schools tends to improve the 
schools in the rural districts, since it is possible to 
employ better teachers and to obtain more efficient 
and effective supervision. In Kingsville some of 
the advantages claimed are as follows: "The line 
between the country-bred and the village-bred youth 
is blotted out"; higher classes may be taught; the 
attendance is larger and more regular; the school 
year has been lengthened as a result of consolida- 
tion ; "all parts of the township have been brought 
into closer touch and sympathy" ; and "the cost of 
maintenance is less than that of the schools under 
the subdistrict plan."^ 

In New Zealand the railroads are utilized to bring 
the children from the rural districts to the city 
schools, thus enabling many country children to 
attend the well-equipped city schools. Three 
months' season tickets are sold on the state rail- 
roads to school children for from two dollars and 
fifty cents to five dollars, according to the age of 
the pupils. Pupils in the primary grades are car- 
ried free. These tickets are sold to all places within 
a radius of sixty miles of the school. "This gives 

^ See Arena, July, 1899; also Reports of Commissioner of 
Education. 

279 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

them a possible one hundred and twenty miles a 
day for three to six cents, in round numbers, or 
twenty to forty miles for a cent. If a child goes 
in and out six miles each day, he rides twelve miles 
for three cents. "^ 

The possibility of utilizing our city and suburban 
electric roads for the transportation of city children 
to well-located suburban schools is worthy of 
careful consideration by our city school authorities. 
The environment of many of our city schools con- 
stitutes one bad feature which, in many cases, can 
be adequately remedied only by removing the school 
itself. The children could gather at some one, or 
at several, sheltered points, or a sufficient number 
of cars could be run on to a siding at some con- 
venient point or points, and the children could be 
conveyed to the school in cars chartered for this 
purpose. In the case of vacation schools, this mat- 
ter is of even greater importance than in the case 
of the regular schools. Many of our city schools 
have small or no playgrounds, and are surrounded 
by brick walls and stony pavements. The constant 
hum and clamor of the street sounds unceasingly 
in the ears of the child. Saloons, billboards, dirt, 
smoke and ashes are familiar elements in the envi- 
ronment. Trees and grass are conspicuous chiefly 
by their absence. On the other hand, if the school 
is located in a rural or suburban environment, it 
could be placed in the center of a large field. 
Trees, shrubs, flowers and grass could now occupy 
prominent places in the environment of the school. 

^ Parsons, The Story of New Zealand, p. 386. 
280 



NEW EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS 

Tennis courts, hand-ball courts, fields for baseball 
, and basketball, playgrounds and gardens could be 
provided for the students. In fact, several school 
buildings might well be grouped together in one 
large field, and be provided with a central heating 
and lighting plant. A noon meal would, of course, 
be provided for the students. Manual-training 
shops, domestic-science laboratories, gymnasiums, 
swimming pools and the like could be utilized by all 
classes in the different schools of the group. 

The value of land in the suburbs is, of course, 
much less than that located in the more central 
portions of the city. The saving of interest on the 
additional issue of bonds necessary to purchase a 
new, or to enlarge an old, central location over that 
required to purchase land in the suburbs would 
practically pay for the expense of transportation, 
which should be at cost to the company. If the 
view that the school of the future will exercise 
supervision over the child from early morning until 
late in the afternoon is accepted, this plan appears 
to offer a rational and happy solution of the prob- 
lem, at least in the case of schools now located in 
the crowded and undesirable sections of our cities. 

Excursions are now usually a part of the pro- 
gram of a well-organized vacation school ; but New 
Zealand seems to make much greater use of this 
educational feature. Excursions are frequently 
arranged in that island for the country children as 
well as for those confined to the city. A flat rate 
of four miles for one cent is given by the railroads 
to the school excursionists. "By these excursions 

281 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

the country children come to town, where they are 
received by school committees who conduct them 
over museums, newspaper offices, gas works, ocean 
steamers, etc., and explain everything. A thousand 
city children see fields of waving yellow wheat 
reaped and bound ; see orchards, forests, mountains, 
lakes and glaciers; view dairy farms and cream- 
eries; and learn about the country and the life of 
the country people."^ It is needless to dwell upon 
the educational value of such sightseeing for both 
the rural and the urban child. If the children of 
New Zealand — a country possessing no large, 
crowded cities with the consequent wide separation 
of rural and urban life — are benefited by such 
excursions, surely the value to American children 
is not small. 

Medical Inspection in ScnooLS 
The duties of medical inspectors for the public 
schools are well stated as follows : " ( i ) The 
supervision of the sanitary condition of school 
buildings and their appointments; (2) the super- 
vision of the carrying out of the regulations con- 
cerning the hygiene of instruction and appliances; 
(3) the care of the health of public-school children 
and aiding the public physicians In preventing and 
combating contagious diseases, determining the 
physical defects of children for the purpose of con- 
tinuous observation or special consideration during 
school hours, and the supervision of the physical 
training In so far as it is directed in school." This 

^ Parsons, p. 387. 

282 



NEW EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS 

is the ideal form of inspection. Medical inspection 
is employed in the schools of cities in Sweden, 
Austria, France, Egypt, Belgium, Holland and 
Germany; in the United States several cities have 
introduced such a system — Boston in 1890, Phila- 
delphia in 1892, Chicago in 1896, and New York 
in 1897. 

Medical inspection is in actual practice usually 
confined to examination of children in order to pre- 
vent the spread of communicable diseases. In the 
schools of New York City both medical inspectors 
and nurses are employed. The inspectors examine 
eyes, tliroats and skin of children ; the nurses give 
aid and advice in the treatment of simple ailments, 
treat certain cases, such as eruptions on the skin or 
the presence of vermin. Thorough inspection and 
treatment of this sort is one of the best possible 
preventives of the spread of communicable diseases. 
In our crowded cities the necessity of such treat- 
ment is almost self-evident to the thoughtful 
individual. 

Consideration should, however, be given to the 
first and second clauses in the list of duties as out- 
lined above. This is a much neglected field. The 
school itself through its buildings, equipment and 
methods is a fruitful source of disease among chil- 
dren. "As far as schools are concerned, the causes 
among school children are to be found mainly in 
the long deprivation of freedom, the restricted 
benefit of pure, fresh air, the unaccustomed quiet 
position in sitting, the confined activity of the 
muscles, and the premature and often protracted 

283 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

mental effort." These conditions are all removable 
and will be removed as progress is made toward a 
more natural and saner method of developing the 
mental and physical capabilities of the young. 
Good ventilation, proper lighting, comfortable 
desks, sufficient exercise and change of occupation 
are proper subjects for the advice of physicians. 
The kindergarten, manual training, physical train- 
ing, nature study, vacation schools, and many other 
recent educational innovations are signs of progress. 
The vital, positive work of medical inspection in 
the schools should be the removal of all those fea- 
tures of school work and apparatus which tend to 
reduce the physical and mental vigor of the student, 
or to induce weaknesses which may offer a foot- 
hold for disease. Ignorance on our part or on the 
part of others with whom we are forced into con- 
tact is a fruitful source of disease. It would be 
difficult to measure or even to roughly estimate the 
economic and social value of the work of con- 
scientious medical experts who can act in conjunc- 
tion with the teacher and board of education for 
the prevention of disease and weakness, and for the 
removal of the conditions which are fruitful causes 
of these evils. Prevention, rather than cure, is, 
of course, the ideal. Medical science has not 
developed its preventive side as well as it might 
because the economic motive for so doing is lack- 
ing. This is not a wholesale indictment of the 
medical fraternity; this condition is merely due 
to the frailties of human nature, and the same 
phenomenon appears in all persons and in other 
284 



NEW EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS 

professions. The permanent employment of physi- 
, cians at reasonable salaries would place physicians 
in such a position that economic motives would lead 
them to make a careful study of the prevention of 
disease. Then the work of such men in the school 
would soon lead them to the home, and to the 
betterment of home conditions. 

Dullness, stupidity, ill-behavior are often due to 
poor sight, poor hearing, bad ventilation or 
improper nourishment. Medical inspection should 
discover these defects and prescribe the proper 
treatment of the child for his physical welfare ; and 
the teacher or principal, by means of the informa- 
tion furnished, will be able to better work out the 
proper line of treatment for his educational develop- 
ment. The transmission of this information to the 
parent ought to aid in obtaining a more rational 
and sympathetic treatment of the child by his 
parents and associates. 

Two fundamental and unanswerable arguments 
may be made in favor of medical inspection and 
care for the children in our public schools. It is 
an essential safeguard against the spread of con- 
tagious and infectious diseases, and it is a means 
of raising the national standard of mental and 
manual efficiency and skill. On the other hand, if 
the state as the result of economic necessity and by 
means of legal regulations makes school attendance 
compulsory, it ought to replace the parental care and 
watchfulness by the skilled attention of competent 
medical practitioners. Compulsory school attend- 
ance forces the child into contact with many other 

285 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

children from a multitude of homes, and at the 
same time It removes the child from the eye of 
the parent. Safeguarding the health of the chil- 
dren is a correlative of a compulsory school law. 
Duty to society and to parents demands medical 
inspection, the school physician and the school 
nurse. 

The School Nursery 
In the homes where the mother is obliged to go 
outside to work, the child Is necessarily left to the 
tender mercies of the older brothers and sisters. 
Lacking proper opportunities for play In the home, 
the street becomes the natural playground for the 
very young child as well as for the older ones. 
The nursery becomes as essential In connection with 
the school as Is the playground or the kindergarten. 
This increasing supervision and control of the 
young by the school may not give ideal results, it 
may not be as beneficial to the child as the average 
home training of the past may have been, but the 
facts of the case must be considered. The home of 
the past of which we think when this question is 
raised, sheltered the mother all day. ''Where 
mother Is, that is home." If the mother is not 
there, If the playground has vanished, if fresh air 
and open spaces are negligible quantities, If there 
is no daily round of chores, what Is there left of 
this traditional home that is more sacred than the 
public school, the public kindergarten, or the public 
nursery? The truth is that many city homes no 
longer afford opportunity for the proper care and 
286 



NEW EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS 

treatment of the growing child. The school must 
care for them or they will go uncared for. It must 
take them from the cradle and minister unto them 
until they are men and women. Until the school 
teachers, the school authorities and the general 
public actually recognize the breadth of the mission 
of the public school, many, many innocent and help- 
less children will be doomed to walk the downward 
path which leads to failure, inefficiency, ill-health 
and crime. 

The evolution of the city home and of the city 
itself has been worked out as the result of purely 
temporary individual economic motives — the lure 
of large and immediate profits has fashioned the 
situation. The child, broader social aims, and the 
happiness of society have been overlooked because 
the ideals and ethics of the frontier were carried 
unmodified into our city civilization. To the school 
now comes the problem of partially, at least, pre- 
paring a place for the child, of protecting him, in 
the name of social welfare and of national progress, 
from the insidious encroachments of private eco- 
nomic interests. 'Tf the school were to assume a 
larger responsibility for the child, it would find it 
necessary to begin with nurseries to care for the 
smaller children whose parents must go to work."^ 
It must go further; it must provide a place and 
suitable recreation or occupation for children of all 
ages while parents are at work. 

The schools of the city of Paris furnish a con- 
crete example of work of this character. There is 

' Hunter, Poverty, p. 206. 

287 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

a system of so-called ''maternal schools" which are 
free to all small children. These schools are, in 
reality, kindergartens. "To bridge the some- 
what abrupt transition from the tender and indul- 
gent methods of the mistresses of the ecolcs 
materncUcs [maternal schools] to the more formal 
and rigid system which prevails in the regular 
primary schools, it has been found well to establish 
a system of so-called enfantile schools for children 
between six and eight. These are for the more 
timid, sensitive, or backward."^ More rational 
methods in the regular primary schools ought to 
remove this ''abrupt transition." An extension of 
some of the methods of the kindergarten into the 
primary grades is undoubtedly desirable. But 
Paris has introduced another innovation which, 
Dr. Shaw states, has been successful. "This is the 
system of garderies, or classes de garde, for small 
children whose parents are employed away from 
home during the day. In many cases — the instances 
were numbered by the thousand — young pupils 
were released at four, while their parents could not 
return from their work for two hours or more. 
Such children are now kept in custody by some one 
connected with their school, are allowed to play 
under safe conditions, and are sent home at the 
proper hour." Certainly, this is a simple, sane 
solution of one of the problems facing those 
responsible for the youth of our cities. 

^ Shaw, Municipal Government in Continental Europe, 
p. 119. 

288 



NEW EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS 

Feeding School Children 
By the following statement Robert Hunter, in 
his well-known book entitled Poverty, startled 
many complacent Americans who have supposed 
that real poverty was almost unknown in this 
republic. "There must be thousands — very likely 
sixty or seventy thousand children — in New York 
City alone who often arrive at school hungry and 
unfitted to do well the work required." Superin- 
tendent Maxwell also says, "What a farce it is to 
talk of the schools providing equal opportunities 
for all when there are thousands of children in our 
city schools who cannot learn because they are 
always hungry." And the pertinent question arises 
in the minds of many : Why compel children to 
come to school and go through the motions of 
studying and learning when in reality they are, in 
many cases, physically incapacitated? If many in 
our city schools are not properly fed, if many can- 
not do efficient work because of lack of food, logic 
as well as humanitarian ideals ought to make clear 
the necessity of backing up our compulsory educa- 
tion law by the school dining room. Paternalism? 
The cry of paternalism, — the diminution of Indi- 
vidual responsibility — is, of course, heard in the land 
every time society assumes functions formerly per- 
formed by the family or by the individual. Cer- 
tainly this is paternalism, but of a kind which 
modern complex conditions make a necessity. It 
is urged against feeding school children, as it is 
against free medical attendance and advice, that it 
tends towards pauperization and irresponsibility; 
19 289 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

but if it aids in building up healthy bodies and active 
minds it acts as a preventitive of the pauperization 
of the next generation. In the period 1820-1850 
it was urged by many opponents of the free school 
system that free public education would pauperize 
both the children and their parents. John Ran- 
dolph, in his speech before the Virginia Convention 
in 1829, emphasized this view. Nevertheless, 
to-day we have free schools, free text-books, free 
public libraries, free public museums and art gal- 
leries, and so on through a long list. Is there any 
logical reason why we should arbitrarily draw the 
line at free meals for school children? Evils are 
doubtless connected with such projects, but the 
scheme should be tried if the resultant evils are 
likely to be less than those now existing. The 
presence of marked class distinctions, of enormous 
differences in the economic strength and position 
of different individuals, makes governmental pater- 
nalism a modern necessity. 

In many European cities the plan of feeding 
school children at noon is no longer a novelty. In 
the United States, in at least three cities — New 
York, Chicago and Milwaukee — private philan- 
throphy has made a beginning ; but over half a cen- 
tury ago, Horace Greeley, in the New York Tribune 
and elsewhere, pointed out the necessity of provid- 
ing for hungry school children. Many children 
come from' homes where the mother is obliged to 
work, from homes where there is no playground 
except the street or alley, from homes which are 
small, unsanitary and uninviting. The school of 
290 



NEW EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS 

the future must be prepared to take care of such 
children, and of all others who may desire to be 
cared for, from early morning until late in the 
afternoon. A noon meal should be served, — a meal 
which is simple, nutritious, well cooked and daintily 
served. A morning lunch ought, of course, to be 
served to those who are actually sent to school 
hungry. This is not considered a charity; it is on 
the same plane as free text-books. The cooking 
department might be utilized to provide meals for 
the pupils. 

The School as an Employment Agency 
The problem of the near future is to be not so 
much that of the direct means of increasing pro- 
duction, but rather of the proper distribution of 
men in different occupations. One of the great 
wastes of modern times is forced unemployment 
in certain localities and industries, and the dearth 
of men in other places and occupations. Only 
improper operation or functioning of the industrial 
and economic machinery of society as a whole 
causes the presence of great floating populations of 
unemployed, although such populations seem neces- 
sarily to accompany modern industrial operations. 
The adjustment of work to workers, the decrease 
of industrial friction, is a crying necessity of the 
twentieth century. How can it be done? This 
is the vital problem of economics, of sociology and 
of education. 

In recent years much has been written and said 
about the right of every man to a job. It has been 

291 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

held by some writers that each individual has a 
moral, or a natural, right to an opportunity to sup- 
port himself and his family in a decent and respect- 
able manner. From the social point of view such a 
contention is right, and should be encouraged. If, 
however, society is to guarantee such a right, if it 
is to agree to provide occupation for all its able- 
bodied members, it surely must, through public 
education, be prepared to train the individual to 
perform useful work efficiently, and it must find a 
place for those individuals after they are so trained. 
Modern conditions are, in fact, forcing upon society 
this question of the right of the laborer to a job. 
Land and opportunity have fallen into the hands of 
certain individuals. Society is obliged for its own 
development and welfare to take care of those 
individuals toward whom opportunity has appar- 
ently turned her back. Indeed, the state may 
eventually find it necessary to enter the industrial 
field as a competitor of the individual employer or 
the private corporation. Under a simple economy 
demand was always accompanied, under normal 
and healthy conditions, by the opportunity to obtain 
satisfaction. Our present intricate system has taken 
this privilege or right away from the majority of 
men. Nearly every one must obtain work through 
some employer of labor. The opportunity to work 
depends in the last analysis upon the decision 
of an individual other than the worker himself. 
The establishment of a legal right to work would 
be the best possible approach to natural conditions ; 

292 



NEW EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS 

but, as was intimated above, it involves the entrance 
of the state into the industrial field. 

Without going so far as to guarantee every per- 
son a job, the school might be used as an employ- 
ment agency, and thus aid in mitigating some of 
the evils of unemployment and in placing the right 
person in the right place. In the case of the able- 
bodied person who is willing to work, unemploy- 
ment is of several kinds, for example, seasonal, due 
to industrial depressions, local and individual. The 
first is not, perhaps, properly a form of unemploy- 
m.ent. The possibility of dovetailing seasonal 
industries together, and the possibility of giving 
trade instruction with this end in view, have already 
been discussed. In the case of widespread depres- 
sions and of unemployment extending over large 
sections of the country, the only remedy lies in the 
considerable increase of public work of various 
kinds. In the case of a local surplus of workers, 
employment bureaus might be established to assist 
workers in finding work in other localities, and 
thus to equalize supply and demand for labor. 

At all times, however, some are out of employ- 
ment, and young persons are constantly seeking 
entrance into the business world for the first time. 
To give assistance to such persons is the real func- 
tion of the school employment agency. Young 
men who are out of work and who have learned no 
trade, or who are not well prepared for any occu- 
pation, could be placed in the continuation school 
during the period of waiting. They could be taught 
the trade for which there is the greatest demand, 

293 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

provided they are qualified to learn such a trade. 
Older men might be made more skilful in their 
chosen trade or calling. The domestic-science 
department might also contribute its mite to the 
solution of the ever-present servant problem; but 
' in order to accomplish much in this direction, train- 
ing of the employers would probably be also 
required. 

Work in the school shops, In school yards or In 
municipal plants of various kinds might be supplied 
to a limited number of persons which would keep 
them from actual want or from the necessity of 
applying for charity. Furthermore, while they 
were thus earning a bare living and waiting to be 
placed, much valuable training in their trade, or in 
some skilled or unskilled occupation could be given. 
In order to take up the work of finding employment 
in the manner just outlined, continuation schools, 
commercial schools, shops and domestic-science 
laboratories are essential. It is, however, feasible 
for manual-training schools, commercial high 
schools and night schools, as at present organized,, 
to give assistance to many of their students. 

Paying Children to go to School 
Since true social reform begins with the incom- 
ing generation, with the plastic minds of the chil- 
dren of to-day, the key to the solution of many 
problems which confront modern society will be 
found in measures which vitally affect the training 
and environment of the young. For this reason 
the most paternalistic, radical and startling of all 

294 



NEW EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS 

the new projects in education cannot be laughed out 
of court. It is soberly presented for careful con- 
sideration as a proposed piece of scientific legisla- 
tion. The chief benefits which may be anticipated 
from the establishment of some system of paying 
children to go to school are three in number : unde- 
sirable child labor would be prevented or greatly, 
reduced ; the mass of children would remain longer 
in school ; and the amount of "race suicide" among 
the middle class would be reduced. J 

Paying children to go to school is in harmony 
with long established national, state and local 
policies. Bounties have been granted to producers, 
ships have been liberally subsidized, protective 
tariffs have been placed on our statute books, vast, 
sums of money have been voted for internal 
improvements, money has been furnished for irri- 
gation, for agricultural experiment stations, for 
schools and universities, for free text-books, for 
charities and corrections, and so on through a long 
Hst. These steps have been taken ostensibly for 
the betterment of society, for the advancement of 
the interests of all the citizens of the United States. 
It is proposed to subsidize the youth of the country 
in order to produce better men and women, to 
reduce the amount of physical and mental weak- 
ness, to raise the standard of morality and of citi-' 
zenship, — in short, to increase the most important 
form of wealth which it is possible for a nation to 
possess. The state as well as the family is vitally 
interested ; the state should share the burden. The 
children of this country are now provided with an 

295 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

expensive school system; but if a large percentage 
of the children cannot or do not remain in attend- 
ance long enough to derive the real benefits of a 
common-school education, the economic and social 
waste is enormous. 

One of the most serious of our industrial evils 
is that of child labor in mines, factories, sweat 
shops, and on the street. In the majority of cases 
where children leave school at an early age to 
become wage-earners, it is because of the cupidity 
or necessities of the parents, the desire of the child 
to earn money, or the character of the available 
school training. When school attendance becomes 
a direct means of earning money, a positive check 
is provided against the operation of the first two 
causes. In order to make education the great lever 
by means of which the level of society may be 
raised, it is necessary not only that the school sys- 
tem enlarge its functions but also that it keep the 
children in school an increasingly long period of 
years. Determined efforts have been made to 
stamp out the evil of child labor by means of 
repressive legislation ; coercion has been used to 
force education upon all children, willing or unwill- 
ing. The measure now under consideration leads, 
instead of pushing, the parent and the child along 
the desired road. Repressive and coercive legisla- 
tion in regard to child labor and education will no 
doubt be necessary after this scheme is put into 
operation, but the probability of its success is mul- 
tiplied many times. The line of least social resist- 
ance is chosen. The temptation to increase the 
296 



NEW EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS 

family income through the work of the child is in a 
large measure removed. By means of this simple 
device the self-interest of the individual is made 
to further human progress. Coercive measures 
are always inefficient and difficult to enforce. When 
the personal interests of the individuals directly 
concerned are visibly aided by the proposed meas- 
ures coercion is unnecessary, and the desired results 
are obtained with a minimum expenditure of social 
energy. It is the acme of scientific legislation to 
direct selfish forces so as to bring about social wel- 
fare, so as to make it easy to do right. 

Children are necesGary to race preservation, yet 
under present conditions children, viewed solely 
from the economic view, are a burden. The antith- 
esis is presented : individual preservation on the 
accustomed standard of living, or race preservation ; 
individual advantages versus social claims. The 
path out of the dilemma leads onward, not back- 
ward. Free schools, free text-books, public play- 
grounds are some of the mileposts on the road 
which leads to payment for school attendance. 
These are forms of state aid to parents, and have 
been ostensibly introduced in the name of the state, 
of society, of the public welfare. The instinct of 
race preservation, in contradistinction to the sexual 
instinct, is not strong in the individual ; only to 
organized society does the broader aspect appeal. 
Industrial and social forces are to-day making for 
the small family. Society cannot turn backwards 
to the industrial conditions of a few generations 
ago; but it can, through legislative measures,- 

297 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

weaken the forces which are now causing late mar- 
riages and opposing the desire for offspring. When 
this is done race preservation will take care of itself. 
The policy of paying children to go to school will 
tend to reduce the amount of child labor among the 
poorer classes of the community, and will, as a con- 
sequence, diminish the number of the future 
inefficient workers and of physical and mental 
weaklings. It will also act so as to raise the birth 
rate of the families in the so-called middle class, 
thus increasing a very desirable element in our 
population. The financial obstacles seem at present 
to offer almost insuperable barriers. Students of 
taxation are however pointing out new and impor- 
tant sources of revenue ; and, on the other hand, the 
adoption of this scheme would tend to reduce the 
nation's bill for drink, crime, ill-health and charity. 
This innovation is the logical consequence of a 
policy which provides free tuition, free text-books, 
free playgrounds and free medical aid in schools. 

What are all these innovations leading us toward ? 
is a question which will rise to the lips of many 
readers. According to Lieber, "the duty of the 
state is to do for man, first, what he cannot do 
alone; second, what he ought not to do alone; 
third, what he will not do alone." Modern life 
makes imperative greater collective action and in- 
creases the duties and responsibilities of the state. 
Greater relative and absolute portions of the national 
income must be devoted to collective betterment 
and enjoyment. The school is one of the chief 
298 



NEW EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS 

instruments by means of which the duty of the 
state in modern industrial society is discharged. 
Not the destruction, but the conservation, of indi- 
vidual development and welfare is the aim. Every 
enlargement and enrichment of the curriculum, and 
every step toward increasing the economic, social 
or industrial functions of our public-school system 
have met with bitter opposition. Many of the 
projects just discussed have been or are now 
being branded as radical and socialistic. This is a 
natural and inevitable phenomenon; every new and 
important measure has been and will be thus 
branded. Every man who has striven to better 
the mass of common humanity and to strike at the 
roots of established inequalities or interests, has 
invariably been tagged an anarchist, a leveler, a 
socialist, or an unsafe person. But history calmly 
points out that many of the radicals and socialists 
of one age become the liberals and conservatives of 
another. 

In the third decade of last century, the man who 
urged manhood suffrage, the abolition of imprison- 
ment for debt, or free public schools was a radical. 
In 1819 a famous Cologne newspaper opposed with 
great earnestness a project to illuminate the streets 
of that city. It took a firm stand against this 
innovation because of theological, legal, medical, 
moral, economic and patriotic reasons. Street 
lighting was on all of these counts a menace to the 
welfare, happiness and advancement of the com- 
munity. The individuals possessed of the hardi- 
hood to favor such a project were, in the eyes of 

299 



• INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

this writer, unsafe persons. The editor himself 
was of course safe and sane ; he "stood pat" for the 
status quo. In 1776 such illustrious gentlemen as 
George Washington and John Adams were revo- 
lutionists. Twenty years ago the writer or speaker 
who urged governmental control or ownership of 
railways was looked tipon with suspicion in many, 
if not all, sections of this country. Before 1898 
no radical dreamed of extending the sway of the 
United States over the people of the Philippine 
Islands ; but the latter are now a part of our 
colonial possessions. 

Those who align themselves in opposition to the 
educational innovations of the present epoch often 
paraphrase men of an earlier generation who were 
opposing certain forward steps which are now 
accepted without question. The writer of to-day 
who denounces a plan to give free noon lunches to 
school children, or the proposal to provide for free 
medical inspection in the schools, usually uses the 
same arguments which men employed three quar- 
ters of a century ago in opposition to the free school 
system. On the other hand, progressive editors, 
educators and business men who honestly desire to 
better the condition of the masses and to improve 
the public-school system, frequently overlook en- 
tirely the great social changes which have been 
wrought by recent industrial evolution. Much of 
the opposition to the so-called "fads" in education 
arises because of a static or unevolutionary con- 
ception of education and of society. Educational 
progress is often retarded by its mistaken friends. 
300 



NEW EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS 

Let us therefore look at these educational questions 
calmly, and let us not be afraid of abusive terms 
used by reactionaries. If our educational radicalism 
is indeed grounded on the solid rock of industrial 
evolution, to-morrow these marks of radicalism 
may be badges of honor and wisdom ; and many of 
the men who now aggressively oppose the alleged 
radical in educational theory and practice will accept 
the new ideals and will point with pride to the 
results which have followed the general adoption of 
these innovations. 



301 



CHAPTER XV 
THE SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE 

And now in conclusion we are confronted by that 
old, yet ever new question: What of the future? 
What is to be the trend of educational evolution 
in the United States in the immediate future? 
True we have problems enough unsolved which 
relate to the present, but the future is unceasingly 
being transmuted into the present. Future prob- 
lems are ever becoming present problems. It is 
well to use the past and the present to aid us to 
discern in a general way the approximate direction 
in which we are moving. In fact, present problems 
cannot be properly solved without looking a little 
way ahead. Society must have some sort of an 
aim and ideal as to the future course of educational 
advance. If in the past educational aims, methods 
and ideals have been colored and conditioned by 
industrial evolution, similar phenomena may logic- 
ally be anticipated in the future. The educator 
who overlooks or refuses to consider the role of 
industrial progress in shaping educational advance 
is living in a world of phantoms. History has 
taught him no lesson. He cannot be accepted as a 
safe guide. The man who believes in perpetualism 
and in fixity of educational values is outside the 
302 



SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE 

great world current of modern thought. On the 
other hand, It must be admitted that we can peer 
only a little way into the future, and can only per- 
ceive the most general and sweeping portions of the 
educational program of even the immediate future. 
It is utterly impossible to discern details. The man 
who attempts to minutely describe the educational 
trend of the next score of years is discredited as 
well as is he who believes in static educational 
ideals and values. 

The school of the future will be a natural product 
of social and industrial progress. Its curriculum 
will be formed and its methods chosen chiefly as a 
result of two distinct influences, one of which, the 
radical influence, arises out of the economic and 
social conditions of the period; and the other, the 
conservative influence, flows from the educational 
and social traditions of what was just and fitting 
in past years and generations. However, judging 
from the requirements of the present, a few gen- 
eralizations may be hazarded. Modern industrial 
life and enterprise present kaleidoscopic changes. 
New methods, machines and systems require con- 
stantly varying degrees and varieties of skill from 
workers engaged in a multiplicity of enterprises. 
The individual of the immediate future, whether he 
be a business man, a professional man or a manual 
worker, must have a broad educational foundation 
so that he may be able to readily adapt himself to 
shifting industrial scenes and conditions. "The 
future," writes Professor GIddlngs, "belongs to the 
adaptable man"; and It will be the function of the 

303 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

school of the future to produce this adaptable, 
resourceful, pliable man. The day of the narrow, 
rigid, lockstep curriculum lies forever behind us. 
The classic educational edifice which was revered 
a generation or more ago, built upon the foundation 
of a purely intellectual, professional, business, or 
trade training, is now crumbling and cracking 
under the unyielding pressure of modern complex 
civilization. The refrigerator car, the telephone, 
breakfast foods, the adding machine, card index 
system, statistical investigation, modern methods 
of soil renewal, systematized invention, spell leisure 
for all, and necessitate fluidity of educational 
requirements. The school of the future will pro- 
vide moral, civic, physical and industrial, as well as 
intellectual training. It will be interested in the 
development of all children from infancy to mature 
manhood. It will supplement the work of the 
home, the factory, the office, the store and the farm. 
The school of the future will be a complex organ- 
ism, exercising many varied functions. Many of 
the educational functions which have been discussed 
in preceding pages will become integral parts of 
the work of the school ; and the internal mechanism 
of the school will undergo many changes. 

In the school of the future much of the rigid 
routine and the formality, which are such con- 
spicuous features in the majority of the schools of 
to-day, will be lacking. This is essential in order 
to compensate for the routine and regularity now 
connected with practically all industrial enterprise. 
In order to bring this to pass, two improvements 
304 



SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE 

are primarily necessary : smaller classes and better 
trained teachers, and both of these mean increased 
expenditures, — a serious obstacle. Fine buildings, 
many well-trained teachers, manual training, domes- 
tic science, playgrounds, vacation, night and con- 
tinuation schools, medical inspectors, school dining 
rooms, kindergartens and school nurseries cost 
money. Larger and larger shares of the national 
income must be applied to collective uses. 

"There must be a freeing of the children in the 
schoolroom. No one who has not had to deal with 
pupils w^ho have passed through the grades of the 
common schools has the slightest idea of the ruinous 
effect of the teacher's eternal dictatorship upon the 
character of the children. Almost everything done 
in the schoolroom is imposed upon the life of the 
pupil, — the pages he shall learn, the lessons he shall 
recite, the things he shall draw, the copies he shall 
write, the selections he shall read, the problems he 
shall solve, the rules of conduct he shall observe, — 
everything has to be accepted without question, and 
the obliteration of personality is the horrible and 
inevitable result."^ The author, when a high- 
school teacher, particularly noticed this deadening 
effect of routine and superimposed authority upon 
his students in mechanical drawing. The majority 
of students in those classes usually wished to follow 
explicit directions, even in regard to minute and 
non-essential details. They did not wish, as a rule, 
to make a personal choice as to titles, position of 

^ W. S. Jackman. Quoted in Zueblln, American Municipal 
Progress, p. 156. 

20 305 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

views, of objects to be drawn, or of style of letter- 
ing, but seemed rather to prefer to accept, without 
question, the teacher's dictum or preference. It 
seemed very difficult for many to utilize oppor- 
tunities to exercise their own judgment and 
initiative. Manual training, when properly taught, 
aids greatly in increasing the student's resourceful- 
ness and ability to depend upon himself; and a 
partial explanation of this fact lies in the disuse 
of the rigid class system. Each student in manual 
training may be allowed to progress according to 
his own ability and energy. 

The school of the future ought to impress its 
lessons by example and influence rather than by 
dissertations. The effect of good environment and 
good example, rather than excellent mottoes and 
rules of conduct, should be called upon. An editor 
has put the matter in a nutshell : *'Boys are won 
not by preaching, but by precept." The school 
building itself should be a practical example of 
simplicity, good sanitation, comfort and beauty. It 
must be clean, well-lighted, and of good architec- 
ture. Pictures should hang on the walls ; plants 
and flowers should adorn the rooms and the yard. 
Let the children feel that these things belong to 
them, and that they must take good care of the 
building and its furnishings. These material 
things are silent, but powerful, monitors which 
influence each child for good. Supplement the 
influence of the building by that of the calm, 
sympathetic, neat, well-trained teacher, and a long 
stride forward is taken in the direction of better 
306 



SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE 

education. The school ought to give the child a 
picture of what right living is and means. Surely, 
this ought to be the heritage of every child, rich or 
poor. The schoolhouse in the poorer sections of a 
city particularly needs to be given special care. In 
too many cases, unfortunately, the school is similar 
in many respects to the dingy, cheerless home of 
the child. After describing the ugly, dirty, depress- 
ing and repulsive environment of the anthracite 
coal regions. Dr. Roberts observes, and what he 
says may be almost literally applied to the condi- 
tions in many of our cities : 'That is the environ- 
ment of thousands of the youths in the anthracite 
regions and it inflicts upon the man incalculable 
wrong which influences his whole life. Amid so 
much that is ugly and debasing, ought not the 
plastic minds of these children be brought in con- 
tact with one spot that is beautiful and serene, 
which would exert a holy influence upon their souls 
and stimulate their aesthetic sense? When the 
environment of the public school and the interior 
of the schoolroom conform to artistic taste in the 
highest sense, then a sacred influence will work 
upon the awakening mind of the child which will 
add dignity and interest to the specific work of the 
teacher. Its grace and suggestiveness will also 
do something to repair the wrong done the child 
by the neglect and cupidity of those responsible for 
the depressing environment generally found in the 
mining communities." The agitation for school 
betterment must be aided and supported by those 
most directly concerned — the laboring people. They 

307 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

feel these conditions directly and personally; they 
must keep up the struggle. 

The school of the future must adapt itself to the 
nature of the child; the pupil should enjoy attend- 
ing school. The methods of the kindergarten, the 
vacation school and parental school will, therefore, 
find a place in the grade schools. No school can 
be termed successful and efficient while a con- 
siderable percentage of the pupils dislike it and its 
lessons. Something is wrong where this is the case. 
Education of the proper kind is pleasurable, and 
will bring forth the best efforts of the pupil. If 
the school is a place to be avoided, the average 
student will not continue his education after he is 
released from school. Such a school is doubly 
inefficient, Elbert Hubbard writes : 'Tn the future 
our children shall go to school — not be sent or sen- 
tenced"; and in many schools this desirable con- 
dition has already been attained. The school of 
the future will become the playground, gymnasium, 
workshop and reading and study room of the boys 
and girls, and of the older people as well. The 
daily sessions will be longer, the gap now made by 
our long vacation will be filled up, and the school- 
house will be open evenings. The character of the 
work given will vary with the seasons and will be 
somewhat dissimilar in different localities and 
environments. To be successful in a city the recre- 
ation feature must be made more attractive than 
those offered by the street, with which the school is 
to come into active competition. The schools of a 
great city will, in the future, afford a good, health- 



SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE 

ful, inspiring environment for children and young 
people. They will offer places of refuge for many 
who otherwise must pass much of their time in 
undesirable environments. 

A serious menace to our school system is the 
so-called '"commercialization" of the schools. The 
systematization of large businesses, with the accom- 
panying economy of operation, has led the com- 
mercial interests of the country to desire to apply 
"business principles" to education. The motive 
force is, of course, reduction of taxation. The aims 
and methods employed must be diametrically 
opposed to those which have been discussed as 
appropriate for the school of the future. The 
animus of the recent *'shake-up" of the Chicago 
Board of Education is to be found in a desire for 
reduction of expense, and for simplification and 
standardization of educational work. The com- 
mercialization of the schools means inefficiency. 
"Children are not pots and pans to be shaped by 
patterns sent down from a central office. Teachers 
are not drudges to be ordered about by a master 
mechanic." Education is an artistic form of indus- 
try ; its normal products are highly individualized. 
Standardization of its products leads to imperfect 
output. The teacher is a skilled workman or, more 
accurately, an artist. Methods must vary with 
teachers ; crowded schoolrooms, systematic and 
numerous reports bound up ia red tape, clock-like 
precision and central-office management convert 
the school into a factory. Commercialization of 
the schools hampers and drives out the efficient 
309 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

teacher and spoils the child. Commercialization 
means reduced wages for the teacher, smaller 
equipments, less school buildings, fewer educational 
"fads" or improvements ; in short, reduced expense 
per pupil. The antithesis is finance versus educa- 
tion ; the taxpayer versus the child ; special interests 
versus society. The demand for commercialization 
of the school is a phase of the old, old struggle of 
the taxpayer against the development of an efficient, 
up-to-date free school system. 

Betterment of the conditions in any industry 
comes from within. The struggle against com- 
mercialization must be started and maintained in no 
small degree by the teachers. Better and broader 
trained teachers are needed. Teaching must be 
looked upon as a profession before it can attain its 
true position among the occupations of men and 
women. Unionization of the wage-earners in other 
industries has prevented the brutalization of the 
worker under the stress of commercialization, or in 
other words under the pressure of an insistent 
demand for profits. Local, state and national 
organization of the school teachers in accordance 
with trade-union policies seems to be a necessary 
measure to prevent the degradation of the teaching 
profession through low wages and overwork, and 
to stop the tendency to transfer public-school edu- 
cation from the category of artistic industry to that 
of a factory industry. Through organization the 
salary and the standard of the teaching profession 
could be raised, and the tenure of office made more 
secure. The organized strength of the members 
310 



SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE 

of this profession is needed to lift the school system 
out of the reach of petty politicians. Strikes, of 
course, are out of the question; but public officials 
and boards of education are nominally servants of 
the people, and can be reached and influenced by 
united, perservering efforts. The experience of 
Chicago and Toledo teachers is indicative of what 
can be accomplished. In the latter city a weak 
organization, supported by only a small percentage 
of the teachers of that city, was able to exercise 
considerable influence. The notable achievements 
of the organized teachers of the city of Chicago is a 
matter of common knowledge. 'Tn organization 
there is strength." 

With the entrance of new aims and methods 
into the school the training of teachers for their 
work should, naturally, undergo modification. The 
teacher should firmly grasp the idea that there is 
no absolute or world-wide concept of educational 
ideals and methods. As has been suggested, these 
change with social and industrial progress, and 
should conform to local and national peculiarities 
and needs. The education which was best during 
the Middle Ages, or in the early part of the nine- 
teenth century, is not the most desirable to-day 
and for the United States. Likewise the education 
of the city boy should be somewhat different from 
that of the country child. The school must aim to 
strengthen and supplement the home and environ- 
mental influences. "The city fathers do not appre- 
ciate the social needs, and the teachers, as a class, 
are lacking in a knowledge of industrial history and 

311 



SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE 

social evolution. They have not realized that the 
home is passing away, and that unless the school 
takes the child he is left to the street. They have 
specialized in philosophy, pedagogy, and psy- 
chology. They have isolated themselves from con- 
tact with those in poverty."^ The psychology of 
the child and his physical well-being should receive 
attention from experts ; but the teacher of the future 
needs especially to study sociology and to come 
into contact with old and young of all conditions 
of life. Sympathetic knowledge of the child's ideals 
is more desirable than further analysis by teachers 
of the psychology of the child. Our normal schools 
devote too much time and energy to psychology 
and the gentle art of adroit questioning, and not 
enough to social and industrial evolution. INIodern 
American education, as has been seen, is becoming 
a potent factor in the social and industrial progress 
and development of the United States. If our 
teachers are not trained so as to recognize this 
function of education, and to aid in increasing its 
importance, our school system cannot perform its 
full duty to the community. 

The problem of raising the funds to maintain 
the school of the future is a serious one, although 
in a time of peace the nation is spending more 
for war than for education. Better trained teach- 
ers, longer school days and school years, smaller 
classes, the introduction of the laboratory and 
manual training, kindergartens, better buildings, 
night schools, gymnasiums, playgrounds and other 

* Hunter, Poverty, p. 209, 

Z^2 



SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE 

modern school necessities, mean the doubling and 
trebling of the expense of the public-school system 
of the United States. We must turn to the econo- 
mist and student of taxation for sources which are 
available to increase the revenues without injurious 
effects upon our industrial growth and prosperity. 
Such sources are found in the enormous differential, 
monopoly and ''forced" gains which now accrue to 
many specially favored members of our in'dustrial 
world. The justice in cutting off unusual earnings, 
and monopolistic and speculative gains, in order to 
divert them from the pockets of individuals into the 
public treasury, is now quite generally recognized. 
Increased inheritance taxes, income taxes, increased 
taxation of city land values and franchise taxation 
are some of the forms of taxation which might be 
utilized by our state and local authorities to increase 
the revenues which could be applied to the improve- 
ment and extension of the work of the public- 
school system. This is certainly a fair and just 
way of applying unusual or unearned incomes of 
individuals to uses which make for the common 
good and for the progress of the nation. 

On the other hand, improvements in the social 
and economic features of our educational system 
will tend to decrease certain expenditures and to 
increase the productive capacity of the people. If 
the public school provides industrial and physical 
training, and opportunity for healthful and invig- 
orating recreation for all, the result w^ill be to 
gradually reduce criminality, to improve the bodily 
health and vigor of the people, and to increase the 

313 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

industrial efficiency of the great mass of workers. 
Ample compensation for increased expenditure for 
-educational purposes will be finally obtained through 
decrease in crime, in cost of jails and police, 
through increase in the total productiveness of the 
nation, and on account of longer average length of 
life and lessened amount of ill-health. One student 
of the question estimates that about $200,000,000 of 
our local, state and federal expenditures are charge- 
able to crime, and that the total annual income of 
all the habitual criminals is about $400,000,000. 
To this total of $600,000,000, he continues, must 
be added the cost of lives taken, labor lost, property 
maliciously destroyed, the cost of locks, bolts and 
safe-deposit vaults, and the mental suffering, broken 
homes, desolation and despair. If the introduction 
of a thorough system of manual training, kinder- 
gartens, vacation schools, playgrounds, parental 
schools, etc., would in a relatively short time reduce 
the above estimate by one fourth or by $150,000,000 
annually, it would release a sum greater than was 
spent for the entire school system of this country 
in 1890. And if we may judge by the value of the 
playgrounds and vacation schools already estab- 
lished, a considerable reduction of juvenile crime 
would follow the general introduction of these 
innovations. A decrease in juvenile crime to-day 
means a corresponding reduction of adult crime 
to-morrow. No less important are the possible 
savings in longer life, better health and increased 
efficiency which the American people may reason- 
ably anticipate from an improved school system 
314 



SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE 

which is able to perform the social and industrial 
functions which, as progress has decreed, should 
now become integral parts of the work of education. 
Recently many voices have been heard and many, 
many books and magazine articles have been written 
in regard to the question of "race suicide." This 
phenomenon must be considered by the economist, 
the sociologist and the educator. Truly, if the 
wealthier and "cultured" people of the nation have 
smaller families than the mass of the workers, if 
they delay or abstain from marriage, a larger per- 
centage of the next generation must come from the 
ranks of the laboring population, the so-called 
masses, than probably came from that class in the 
present generation. Many deplore in emphatic 
terms this apparent "dying at the top," and see in 
it sure signs of a decline in the ability and vigor 
of the American people. Our view of this matter 
is, in a large measure, dependent upon our theory 
of heredity. Does or does not the child inherit the 
intellectual, industrial, or professional traits of his 
father or grandfather? If he does, if a son of a 
college professor is, through heredity, irrespective 
of environment, best prepared for the teaching pro- 
fession, if the son of a machinist is born with those 
traits which make him specially adapted to follow 
his father's trade, then indeed we must look with 
alarm upon any tendency toward "race suicide" 
amongst certain classes of our population. But if 
we accept, as probably we must sooner or later, the 
theory that the child comes into the world with 
practically no intellectual or industrial inheritance 

31S 



INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 

from his immediate ancestors, then may we view 
this phenomenon with more complacency. Our 
attention and energy will be turned toward better- 
ing the home and school environment, and toward 
improving the influences which act upon the grow- 
ing child. Let us cease writing and declaiming 
about "race suicide," and utilize our energy in an 
effort to improve the social, industrial and educa- 
tional conditions of the masses. Here is a work 
worthy of the best efforts of the earnest reformer 
and the true statesman. If the prominent men and 
women who are employing so much time and 
energy in a vain flood of written and spoken words 
will' turn their faces toward the great problem of 
a modern democracy — the education of the masses — ■ 
an important and valuable work might be accom- 
plished which would redound to their honor. It 
seems quite clear that luxury and "culture" lead 
almost invariably in a few generations to degen- 
eracy. The history of this republic offers hundreds 
of conspicuous examples of this phenomenon. His- 
tory teaches that the hope of a nation lies in the 
masses. If they are weaklings and degenerates, 
decay inevitably follows. Education in a democ- 
racy of the modern industrial type should lead to 
industry, to the "simple" and self-supporting life, 
to ideals which emphasize doing rather than being 
served, to the apotheosis of work rather than of 
leisure, to higher aims than that of mere wealth 
accumulation.^ 

* See "Broad Aspects of Race Suicide," by the author, in 
The Arena, December, 1906. 

316 



INDEX 



Adams, Prof. H. B., 274. 

Agricultural college, the, 206. 

Agricultural education classi- 
fied, 207. 

Agriculture in the public 
schools, 212; the United 
States Department of, 219. 

Apprenticeship, 198; present 
status of, 200 ; statistics 
of, 200 ; agreements in re- 
gard to, 202 ; legal require- 
ments in regard to, 203. 

Art in industry, 140. 

Athletics, educational value 
of, 246. 

Baths, municipal, 262. 

Calvinism, 24. 

Carter, J. G., 29. 

Chicago, university-extension 
work of, 274. 

Child labor, a preventive of, 
296. 

Children, the motives of, 244. 

Cities favor educational prog- 
ress, the, 34 ; rapid growth 
of, 58. 

Citizenship, training in, 268. 

City, the modern, 59 ; the 
school, 266. 

Civil War, educational ad- 
vance after the, 40. 

Class demarkations, 10, 87, 
161. 

Coercion is inefficient as a 
remedy for social ills, 297. 

Colonial education, 2$. 



Commercial education, 222 ; 
recent progress in, 223. 

Commercialization of the 
schools, 309. 

Commons, Prof. J. R., 194. 

Conference on Home Eco- 
nomics, Lake Placid, 175. 

Conscience, the rennaissance 
of the physical, 263. 

Continuation school, the, 226 ; 
for boys, curriculum in. 

Correspondence instruction in 

America, 185 ; methods 

employed in, 189. 
Correspondence School, the 

International, 190. 
Crime, cost of, 314. 
Curriculum of the school of 

the future, 303. 

Debt, imprisonment for, 30. 

Dewey, Melvil, 275. 

Dining room, objections to, 
school, 289 ; arguments in 
favor of, 290. 

Division of labor, 65, 66, 70. 

Domestic science, 174; edu- 
cational value of, 121 ; 
economic value of, 178. 

Economic Association, Amer- 
ican, 6. 

Education, functions of, 9 ; 
should be democratic, 11 ; 
a fundamental measure in 
the betterment of the 
masses, 16; can it be made 



317 



INDEX 



a directive social agent? 
17 ; increased importance 
of, 54 ; should be modified 
to fit individual needs, 79 ; 
should be made pleasur- 
able, 308 ; in a democracy, 
316. 

Educational innovations, op- 
position to, 255. 

Educational evolution in the 
near future, 302, 

Educational unrest, 13. 

Employment agency, school 
as an, 291. 

Environment, educational 
value of good, 306. 

Fads, educational, 42. 
Farmers' institutes, the, 218. 
Feeding school children, 289. 
Fellenberg's school, 266. 
Financial problems, 312. 
Forestry, schools of, 221 ; is 

a form of agriculture, 221. 
Frontier, the effect of the 

disappearance of the, 55. 
Future, the school of the, 302. 

Gardens, school, 260. 

Germans in Pennsylvania op- 
pose free schools, 38. 

Gill, W. L., 266. 

Grammar schools, 26. 

Great-man theory of educa- 
tional progress, 45. 

Green, T. H., 34. 

Hampton Institute, 196. 

Hand work, revival of, 144. 

Harper, Dr. W. R., 186. 

Higgins, M. P., 185. 

Hobson, J. A,, 70. 

Home, the modern, 98 ; rea- 
sons for diminishing edu- 
cational value of, 118. 

Home training contrasted 
with school training, 51, 
96, 109. 



318 



Household industry is doomed, 

105. 
Housekeeping schools, 235. 
Hull House Labor Museum, 

146. 
Hunter, Robert, 289. 
Hysperia movement, 219. 

Ideals demanded, new educa- 
tional, 88. 

Immigration, 56, 64. 

Imperialism, danger from, 72. 

Industrial school, day, 247. 

Industry, influence of primi- 
tive and of modern, 48. 

James, Pres. E. J., 3. 

Juvenile delinquent, compos- 
ite picture of a, 240 ; in 
Cook County jail, 252. 

Kindergarten movement in 
America, 170. 

Labor, prejudice against, 84 ; 

place in history, 150. 
Laboratory work, educational 

value of, 127. 
Earned, Mrs. L. H., 177. 
Leisure, educational value of, 

234- 
Library, growth of the travel- 
ing, 276. 

Mallock. W. H., 81. 
Mann, Horace, 28. 
Manual-training movement in 

America, 171. 
Maternal schools in Paris, 

287. 
Medical inspectors in the 

schools, work of, 282 ; are 

needed, 285. 
Mitchell, John, 62. 

Negro industrial schools, 192. 
New York, education in, 35. 



INDEX 



New Zealand, transportation 
of school children in, 279, 
^281. 

Newsboys' organizations, 257. 

Nineteenth century, progress 
during, 4. 

Normal schools, the work of, 
312. 

Nursery, the school, 286. 



Oberlin College, 184. 

Ohio, transportation of school 

children in, 278. 
Oneida Institute, 184. 
Organizations, teachers', 310. 

Parental school, the, 114; the 
Chicago, 248, 251, 

Paternalism in the United 
States, 295. 

Paying children to go to 
school, 294. 

Pennsylvania, education in, 
36. 

Philanthropy, opportunity for 
private, 22,7. 

Playgrounds, 261. 

Population, growth of, 30, 
239. 

Poverty, the evils of, 253. 

Precedent, value of, 151. 

Public-school instruction, dif- 
ficulties and evils in, 241. 

Public schools, attendance in 
the, 226 ; do not reach the 
workers, 22^ ; utilitarian 
education in the, 229. 

Race degeneracy, 104. 
Race suicide, 315. 
Radicalism, opposition to, 

299, 301. 
Referendum vote in 1850, 60. 
Reformatories, 250. 
Robinson, C. M., 148. 
Roycroft Shop, 145. 



Saloon, substitutes for the, 

258. 
Savings banks, school, 271. 
School work, dislike for, 82. 
Schools, arguments in favor 

of free tax-supported, 31. 
Self-supporting schools, 184. 
Simpson, Stephen, 33. 
Social center, the school as a, 

255- 

Specialization, the effect up- 
on the worker of, 142 ; of 
industry, 62, ^7, 69. 

Spencer's educational theo- 
ries, 124. 

Street gangs, 257. 

Suburban schools, transpor- 
tation of pupils to, 280. 

Sunday, instruction on, 231. 

Systematization in the public 
schools, dangers of, 74. 

Teachers are conservative, 

130. 
Technical instruction in 

America, 204. 
Textile schools, 182. 
Toledo University School, 

147, 268. 
Trade, manual-traitiing and 

technical schools differen- 
tiated, 130. 
Trade school, the, 180; the 

New York, 181. 
Transportation of pupils, 2^^, 

280. 
Truant school, the, 247. 
Trusts, effects of the, 63. 
Tuskegee Institute, 196. 

Union meetings in public- 
school buildings, labor, 260. 

Unionism, ethics of, 152; 
stands for high ideals, 156; 
demands of, 158; program 
of, 162. 



319 



INDEX 



Unions do not actively op- 
pose manual training, labor, 
137, 164. 

University extension, 2^2- 

Vacation schools, growth of, 

264. 
Variation in individuals, T], 

116. 
Veblen, T. B., 61. 

Ward, L. F., 46. 
Washington, B. T., 193. 
Wayland, Dr. Francis, 113. 



Wilmerding School of Indus- >t 

trial Arts, 181, 
Wisconsin, University of, 

188, 207. 
Woman, as the primitive 

worker, 97; work of, 100, 

102; workers in the United 

States, 43, loi ; problem, 

the crux of the, 107. 
Work, educational value of, 

90, 93 ; the right to, 291. 
Working Man's Advocate, 

156. 
Workingmen's party in New 

York, 33. 



320 



W12 









fj.r.'i 










o 




*^0< 






4 O • 






V >../ ;A^^ 







> • • • 




K'^^r^^' \.^^'*\/ 





^o '^.^w .^^'^"^ '-^K*' /\ " 










- -ov*' '.^i^--. "*^„/ '^^i\ "-^^J^ «•: 



0^ •!.•.•* V 







WERT 
BOOKaNCXNC 

»«!OOt.fTOW»« PA 

MAR 84 



cT -^Va-. ^^ A^ -N 



